The Harrowing Truth

An Atonement Analysis By Maggie Brandewiede

“It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

The innocence of youth is cunning, and imagination is often mistaken for truth. Because of those falsely identified incidents that occurred one hot summer night in 1935, imagine a thirteen year old girl having your entire future determined. Atonement is a novel that is glaringly more descriptive and engaging than Ian McEwan’s other works. It transcends the barriers of perspective, and makes you second guess the reliability of your narrator. However, from the first seventy pages or so you would not assume so. It starts off with an unimaginative tone and goes over the events that happen over the course of only one day and night. It tells you rather than shows you; a purposeful choice. McEwan’s goal for this novel was to show us that forgiveness can never be absolute until atonement is reached. It is apparent to the reader that there is a daunting overtone of guilt and a need for resolve. This is the detail that hooked me from start to finish. McEwan interweaves words and descriptions like painting a picture. Every setting is very surreal and there is a feeling of escapism in the flow of his words. McEwan leaves you in indecisiveness until the final page. What really happened?

This novel is crafted in three parts. The first part focuses on the Tallis family. They dwell in their countryside mansion set in the rural, rolling hills of London, England. Our main character is an ambitious thirteen year old writer prodigy: Briony Tallis. Her melodrama titled The Trials of Arabella starts “This is the tale of Arabella, who ran off with an extrinsic fellow. It grieved her parents to see their first born Evanesce from her home to go to Eastbourne without permission…” She intends on putting her play on with her visiting cousins, Lola, and the twins Jackson and Pierrot Quincey. They plan on staying over the course of the summer because of their parent’s divorce. Lola is in denial of this. They are preparing for Briony’s brother, Leon, to return home and plan on performing it for him as a welcome home gift. Cecilia Tallis, a young woman, home from college with no real ambition for living, stays in all day and smokes cigarettes. Her character has a furious temperance and is agitated by the slightest thing. She acts as a role model for Briony whether she realizes it or not. Briony’s play doesn’t get anywhere and she witnesses something occur between Robbie Turner, (the groundskeeper's son) and her sister, Cecilia. Robbie and Cecilia are known to be childhood friends long ago, and now they are both grown. For her innocent eyes this appears very suspicious and she becomes concerned with it. What happens with the two at their garden fountain infers an idea in Briony, and her imagination carries its course. She doesn’t quite understand it but she does something foolish anyways. “The world, not one she could make, but the one that had made her.” Despite knowing right from wrong, Briony chooses to see the world through a personal perspective. She intercepts the letter Robbie writes to Cecilia and it is extremely perverse. This confirms her thoughts and she stuffs it away. Later than night, she walks in on Robbie and Cecilia making love, however, she assumes he’s attacking her. Her unreliability as both a narrator and character alone is aggravating. Shortly afterwards, someone notices the twins have disappeared. They decided to run away because of the guilt of their parent’s divorce. This engages everyone to go out in the night and search for them. Briony, searching alone, witnesses her cousin, Lola getting raped. Without hesitation, Briony accuses Robbie the one who raped her, convincing everyone there that he was, in fact, the one guilty. He returns with the twins, looking like a criminal instead of a hero.

At this point, Briony’s actions have eternal consequences. The second part of the novel amounts to more drama and the evidence of long term effects that changed everyone’s lives. Five years later, Robbie is in France going through the tough conditions of World War II and briefly touches on the results of Dunkirk. We find out that Robbie served a total of three years in prison before being released. He finds the war to be the best route for him. During his time in service, he recollects the victim that he really is and relishes in his hate and anguish for his situation. Cecilia tells Robbie she’s waiting for him and despite being wounded; Robbie puts his faith in that, knowing that he will soon be able to make it home to her.

The third major part picks up when Briony, (now eighteen), becomes a nurse in London. She hopes that nursing will act as a retribution for the extreme guilt she feels. She still writes and submits her work to local newspapers but is usually turned down. Her experience from the war gains her an insight into what it was like firsthand and she expects it to take away some of the guilt because she feels like she’s helping someone. Soon after, she attends her cousin, Lola’s wedding to Paul Marshall (the real rapist). It’s yet another event that brings up their dark recollection of that summer. Tortured by her conscious, Briony visits her sister, Cecilia; to find her and Robbie living together happily. This brings a sense of joy and justice to the reader. They are clearly very shocked at her being there and instead of finding reprieve she admits what she did was wrong and asks what can be done. At this point, it seems too late. After all, you can’t change the past. In the end, Briony finds her atonement in an unexpected way.

There’s a blatantly obvious desire to learn from one’s mistakes as the core theme of this novel. Briony was the prime example of this. "How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime." She attempted to use writing as a method of coping. Despite it’s somewhat depressing storytelling decisions it succeeds on a level higher from any other when it comes to facing the facts and telling it like it is. Atonement also makes the smooth transition from third person point of view of one of our characters to first person by the final pages. The question that is begged to be answered by its audience is “what happened?” The crafty narrative weaves its way into our conscience and takes control of us in a beautiful literary way. It’s all about perspective. The events in the novel followed each other into a built up tension that was ultimately the deciding factor of the character’s ultimate fates. Their actions led them there on their own, whether they realized or not; some more obvious than others. The circumstances that Briony goes through really shapes her point of view and changed her thoughts on what she saw. And for that reason, there is a present psychological dilemma with her perception of the feelings around her. This alters her approach to the situation entirely. She is too young and too naïve to see the existence of love in her sister, Cecilia. This way the story is being presented at several different angles, and not just the narrators. War is another present theme in this book. Robbie is not only in an internal war with himself, but also fighting for his life. It is not a heavy theme but it is touched on. It can also be a metaphor for what he goes through. Something else I picked up on was having an identity. You can call Briony many things, (i.e. a writer, a liar, what kind of person is she really?) Atonement includes at least fifty years of time gone by, so of course the characters change. This also goes back to the unreliability of our narrator. What can we really trust and take to heart? This greatly influences the novel’s final twist.

Atonement is a new personal favorite of mine. In a novel so concerned with fiction’s relation to the real world, this creation cannot but fail to have the successful two sided tone of the novel’s first section: it has impending reality. While at the same time it raises the discussion about it’s awareness of that reality. The ending changes everything we know about what we just read--and it’s extremely devastating. The novel is presented elegantly as a notable aura of English life before crumbling to the aftermath of the war. It seemingly burns way the abstract, and gives us lasting memories very much alive.

“Can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her ... power of deciding outcomes, she is ... God?”