Review on the Novel Atonement free essay sample

McEwan takes the innocence of childhood and juxtaposes it with despicable crimes and unchangeable mistakes, thus creating a protagonist the reader despises. Just as political conflicts start to unravel towards World War Two, so does Atonement begin. Briony, an aspiring writer, is preparing to produce and preform her first play, The Trials of Arabella, just in time for her older brother Leon, home from University, to see it. Attending along with her older brother is her elder sister, Cecilia, the Tallis life long family friend, Robbie Turner, some friends of Leons from school, and three cousins. She demanded perfection from herself and yearned attention for it. Her desire for perfection can be read as a need for control, which she finds within the depths of her imagination and thus the act of writing itself. It is during the hours before her play that Briony allows her imagination to escape the limits of pages and ultimately manipulate the reality of the people around her. Inherently frightened and confused by what she does not understand, Briony witnesses a flirtation between Robbie and Cecilia, and from there, makes decisions that change all their lives. And so a young girl who thought herself the heroine of her own drama, will find she is the villain of someone elses. The transition from childhood to adolescence can feel isolating and uncontrollable, which is precisely why McEwan wrote Briony among these years. Briony witnesses not only a seemingly intense flirtation between her sister and Robbie, but also, that night, her cousin being sexually assaulted. Stumbling in on the crime scene, she becomes the chief witness and must speak on her cousins behalf who is too shell-shocked to recall any details. This all occurs before The Trials of Arabella could be preformed and after Briony intercepts a very convicting love letter from Robbie Turner to Cecilia. With each sibling being ten or more years older then Briony, she has grown up precocious and righteous, a girl â€Å"possessed to have the world just so† (4). Briony did not need to think twice about the shadow that was the perpetrator; with all the control she could create exactly the story she wanted to, allowing her imagination to thrive. She accused Robbie Turner of the crime. Her interpretation of that letter had led her to believe it to be so r was it just too enticing of a twist? Too surprising and heartbreaking? Exactly the story she wanted? McEwan uses hubris to create the character that is Briony. This heightens the catharsis that the reader feels when Robbie is indeed wrongly convicted and sent to prison and then, ultimately enlisted in war, leaving his and Cecilia’s love thwarted. The remainder of the novel deals with how Briony seeks atonement for her â€Å"mistake† but realizes she will never receive forgiveness nor forgive herself for that ill-fated day. It is this opinion that the reader also adopts. The heavy sense of regret is prevalent throughout the rest of the novel, which appeals to a universal fear of mistakes and their repercussions. Furthermore, McEwan takes this pathos of fear and integrates it into a childhood character resulting in not just regret, but life-long regret. The reader travels forward in time, several years after the incident, when the accusations could no longer be revoked, and the relationships became irreparable. Briony is working as a war nurse and has estranged herself from her family, just as her sister has done someplace else in war torn England. Robbie Turner is trying to survive each turbulent day in war with thoughts of Cecilia as motivation. McEwan describes World War Two brilliantly by creating scenes of unthinkable death and suffering whilst threading hope and love to convey the complexities of war. Its during these pages that the reader realizes the full consequence of Brionys actions. Briony herself, witnessing the horror and carnage of war in the hospital, is distraught as ever about the incident. She has stopped writing thus imprisoning the same imagination that destroyed so many relationships. Cecilia defended Robbie against her family, and in doing so cut them off entirely, the foremost being Briony. This only intensifies the readers distaste for Briony and the effect she let herself make. Her internal conflict evolves for the worse with time, and even with the sacrifices she makes, it is clear atonement is far off in the distance from herself, her family, Robbie, or the reader. McEwan takes what is ethical and distorts it using the relationships between the characters. He uses some of the most sensitive relationships, such as sisters and lovers, to evoke questions in the reader: what mistake could lead to a loss of family? Of love? Family is often a symbol of eternal love, but in Atonement, that symbol is shattered. The bonds of family love cannot always be healed with apologies. McEwan integrates the unchangeable law that an action must have a reaction, some of which, can never be appealed or revoked. It is in this truth that Briony must live out her life. In the last segment of the novel, we are introduced to Briony, aged fifty years and entering her final days of life. We discover the voice and tone of the story all along has been that of Briony herself. The animosity we feel for Briony throughout the novel is because the voice has been bias; she does not seek the readers forgiveness, but rather their judgment. The reader is immersed in a delineated reality where verisimilitude is difficult to grasp just as the separation of reality from imagination is not easily understood by a child. McEwan uses this parallelism to bring the story full circle. Yet, with all the ambiguity of truth and time, both voices in the novel (McEwans and Brionys) ensure that the reader is receiving clearly, the unrequited opinion of the Protagonist. Briony is able to reflect in the last pages of the book, on the novel she created, fully confronting her character. â€Å" How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one that can forgive her. No atonement for God† (350). It was the novelist and the creator within her who lied and condemned the love and lives of her sister and Robbie. Briony creates the novel to console her uncertainties of the past- yet still will not fabricate the one fact she knows to be true: that she will never find atonement. Work cited McEwan, Ian. Atonement. New York Anchor Books, 2001