Atonement Summary

"Atonement" is a book written in three major parts, with a final denouement from the author.

Part One tells the story of one day/night in 1935 at the Tallis family estate north of London, England. It focuses on Briony Tallis, the thirteen-year-old youngest daughter of three, who aspires to be a writer. She has written a play to be performed at dinner for the homecoming of her brother, Leon, and put on by herself and her three cousins who are staying with the Tallises for the summer because of a divorce between their parents. Before the play can be properly rehearsed, Briony witnesses a scene between her older sister Cecilia and the son of the family charwoman Robbie Turner. What is an innocent act is greatly misunderstood by the young imagination, and this sets off a series of events with eternal consequences.

Following the fountain scene, Briony intercepts a letter from Robbie to Cecilia and reads it. In it, she discovers perverse desires and sets out to protect her sister from this sex-craved maniac. Before she can do so, she witnesses the couple making love and mistakes it for assault, further confirming her assumption that Robbie is out to harm Cecilia.

Before the night is through, her twin cousins run away from home triggering the rest of the dinner guests to search for them in the dark night. Briony, who is searching alone, witnesses a rape taking place of her older cousin Lola. Not one to miss her opportunity, Briony convinces everyone at the scene, including authorities, that the assailant was Robbie Turner, and he is taken to jail.

Part Two takes place five years later. It follows Robbie Turner as he retreats through France as a soldier during the war. The reader has learned he served three years in prison for his crime and is now able to exonerate himself by serving in the army. Separated from his battalion, Robbie is marching through the countryside with two other corporals trying to get to the evacuation town of Dunkirk. During his march, Robbie experiences the atrocities of war, and has plenty of time to consider his situation as soldier, criminal, and victim of Briony's false accusations. The three men make it to Dunkirk which is in a state of complete chaos. Robbie is severely wounded but is determined to make it home to Cecilia who is waiting for him.

Part Three picks up the eighteen-year-old Briony who has signed up as a nurse in London. Suffering from guilt for her crime as girl, Briony hopes nursing will act as a penance for her sin. Briony is also still writing. She submits a story to a London journal which is rejected, but in the rejection she is encouraged to develop the story further as it is quite good. When the soldiers return from Dunkirk, Briony experiences the horrors of war first hand, and is humiliated at her failure to perform her duty. At the end of Part Three, Briony seeks out her older sister. Before she does, she attends the wedding of Paul Marshall (whom she knows to be Lola's rapist) and Lola. Briony does nothing to stop the marriage.

When she visits her sister, it is discovered that Robbie is still alive and living with Cecilia. This makes Briony happy to see. She does not so much as ask for forgiveness from the two lovers (who refuse it anyhow) as simply admit her guilt and seek counsel on what she can do to make it better. Robbie and Cecilia give Briony a list of instructions to follow that will help clear Robbie's name. Briony agrees to do each one, and heads back to work in London. The last we see of Robbie and Cecilia are on the tube station platform.

The final section of the boo, London, 1999, is a letter from the author to the reader. It is revealed here that the author is Briony herself. She explains that she was able to write the war parts of the book with the aid of letters form the museum of archives and a pen-pal relationship with one of the corporals with whom Robbie marched. Briony attends a birthday party/family reunion at her old home, the original scene of the crime. She also reveals that she is dying. In a final twist, Briony informs her reader that she has made up the part about visiting Cecilia and Robbie in London and how both people died in the war. Her act to let their love last forever in the pages of her book will be her final atonement to her crime.

About Atonement "Atonement" is the eleventh book written by Ian McEwan. It was published in 2001 and won the W.H. Smith Literary Award in 2002, the National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award in 2003, the L.A. Times Prize for Fiction in 2003, and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel in 2004. It was also made into an award winning film in 2007 directed by Joe Wright and starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. "Atonement" is by far McEwan's most recognized piece of fiction. "Atonement" is a story about love, guilt, shame,forgiveness, war, social class, identity, and loss of innocence. It follows Briony Tallis, who, on a hot summer day in the 1935 upperclass countryside, witnesses events between her holder sister Cecilia and the son of of her father's housemaids Robbie Turner. Briony's innocence gives way to a misinterpretation of what she sees, triggering an imagination to run wild and leading to an unspeakable crime that changes all of their lives. Briony's search for her own identity, the meaning behind what she has done, and forgiveness in her own heart runs through the chaos and horror of World War Two and all the way

up to the close of the twentieth century. Relying heavily on shared narratives and perspectives, Ian McEwan's "Atonement" will leave his reader questioning the ability to overcome guilt as well as the power of storytelling and the literary tradition.

Character List

Briony Tallis

Briony is the main character of the book. In essence, she is the author and the story is told through her eyes, although somewhat removed (see "Major Themes" for more on this point). When the story begins, Briony is 13 years old (although, I have to say some pages have her at 12 and others at 11, but for the most part, it is determined she is 13 years old on page 109). She was born in 1922 and the only mentioning of her birth states that it was "difficult" and triggered her mother's long illness with migraines and depression. Briony has two older siblings: Leon, who is twelve years older and living in London; and Cecilia, who is ten years older and is living at home having just returned from school in Cambridge. The narrator refers to Briony as a little girl whose effective status is as an only child. Early on her life, Briony discovers her passion for words and secrets. When we meet her, she has written a play called "The Trials of Arabella" which she also attempts to star in and direct. It is clear to the reader that Briony is a girl with an extended and vivid imagination. Her reality compared to her high-demand vision of life is called nothing but "dreams and frustrations." She entertains a high amount of self pity when she doesn't get what she wants and expects too much from the people and the world around her. Briony is losing her innocence from the moment "Atonement" begins. Bearing witness to a sequence of events between her older sister and the son of their charlady, Briony misinterprets the motives and intentions of adult behavior. This causes her to trigger a series of events that will have long-lasting and incredibly damaging results for the parties involved. Briony grows up to serve as a nurse in London during World War Two. She also begins to write while in London, and by the end of the book we meet Briony as a 77 year old who has just learned of a terminal illness (vascular dementia). She is being celebrated by her family for her successes as a writer. It is during this final chapter that we learn Briony to be the author of our tale.

Cecilia Tallis Cecilia Tallis could be considered the second heroine of "Atonement." She is Briony's older sister by ten years, and suffers in love by the misguided crime of her young sister. Cecilia is quite different than her younger sibling. The opening chapters describe her state of living as untidy, taking time to illustrate the unorganized and scattered way in which she lives. We also learn of a dear maternal affection in Cecilia for her younger sister, who shows an enthusiasm for Briony's childish, imaginative mind that Briony perceives as being condescending. Further on into part one of the novel, the reader also learns that it was Cecilia who would go to Briony when her creative mind would get away from her at night, causing her terrifying nightmares. During these spells, it was Cecilia who would run to her sister's room and hold her, repeating the phrase "Come back"--words that will carry plenty of weight throughout the entire novel.

Cecilia studied at Cambridge where she learned the unfortunate separations between gender and social class. Robbie Tuner was at the university at the same time she was, although they did not befriend one another because of the clear social-class distinction between the two. Back that Tallis household for the summer, Cecilia feel impatient and desperate for something exciting to happen to her. She also feels useless as a member of the Tallis family. She is restless and wants to feel needed, but is not.Cecilia discovers Robbie Turner's love for her after receiving a letter by the hand of Briony. Surprisingly (especially to Robbie) she embraces his desires and mirrors his sentiments. When Robbie is accused of raping Lola Quincey, Cecilia is the only one who stands by him, insisting on his innocence. Following the incredulous accusations towards her lover, Cecilia exiles herself from the Tallis family. She moves to London to become a nurse and we only hear from her through her love letters to Robbie Turner while he is fighting the war off in France. In the final section of the book, Cecilia is surprise-visited by Briony. She receives her little sister and we find Robbie and her living together in a small flat in London. The last we see of Cecilia is when she and Robbie escort Briony back to the subway station following a visit in which forgiveness for her sister's malice crime is never granted. In the end, we learn Cecilia was killed in a bombing in a London train station during the war.

Robbie Turner Robbie is the main male character of the novel. He is the young man who we follow into battle during World War Two in the middle sections of the book, as well as the character whom is falsely accused of rape by Briony Tallis. Robbie Turner is the son of the Tallis charlady Grace Turner. During childhood, all the children were too young and innocent to recognize any difference between themselves and Robbie was close friends with Leon and Cecilia, and acted as an older, caring brother to the young Briony. When his is introduced in the book, he is 23 years old and has just returned from Cambridge where he earned a literature degree. He is now working on some landscaping in the Tallis park and debating on going back to school for a degree in

medicine. His entire schooling has been funded by the generous Jack Tallis. We learn that Robbie's father Ernest left him and his mother when he was six years old with no real explanation. Rather than turn the Turners onto the street, Jack Tallis offered a position on the house staff to Grace and over the years both mother and son became an extended part of the Tallis family.

Robbie is described as being very handsome, "sheer bulk," and quite intelligent (24). Although ignored for the most part by Cecilia at Cambridge, Robbie pens a letter to her announcing his love for her. He intends to deliver an apology letter for breaking the family's relic vase, but the letters are accidentally switched and his awkward predicament is set.After being caught making love to the higher class Cecilia, Robbie is accused of raping the young cousin Lola. Robbie is found guilty of the crime and sent to prison for three years. When Britain enters the war in 1939, Robbie has an opportunity to emancipate himself by fighting in France. This he does. The middle of the book follows Robbie through his horrific tour (retreat, really) from the front lines near Belgium back to Dunkirk where the British army was gathering to flea back to England via the English Channel. Robbie is injured with shrapnel during a bombing, but marches on with his two corporal companions Nettles and Mace. Turner reaches Dunkirk. The next time we pick him up is in Cecilia's flat in 1940 when Briony visits, seeking her "atonement." Robbie is furious with the young lady for the crime she committed and refuses to forgive her, instead instructing her on a series of legal action that will help clear his name. In the end of the book, it is revealed that Robbie died in the war as a result of his wounds.

Emily Tallis

Emily is mother to Briony, Cecilia, and Leon, and wife to Jack Tallis. She is 46 years old in 1935 where the first third of the novel takes place. She is defined as distant and unfriendly and seems to let the Tallis household be managed by the staff that is employed there. To her defense, Emily is pretty much a single mother--her husband Jack is never around, devoting more of his time to his work in the Whitehall ministry than to his family. Emily suffers from severe migraines, an illness that began after the birth of her youngest child Briony. She was educated at home by herself until she was 16, then she was sent to Switzerland to boarding school. Her view about woman and class in society is traditional. She feels woman are subservient to men and social classes should not mix romantically. Emily has a special maternal instinct for her youngest daughter, Briony, and it is said that she "loves to love her" and "protects her against failure" (62). Overall, she is described as having a maternal "sixth sense [and] tentacular awareness" for her children and her household. There is a complete and in-depth description of Emily Tallis given at the beginning of Chapter 6.

Jack Tallis

Jack is the father of the household and a minor character in the novel. We know he is an extremely hard-working and generous man. He is never home, spending all of his time at the ministry in London where he works, suggestively on secret government preparations for the inevitable war with Germany (on page 115, he refers to himself as a "slave" to Britain). Jack values family and patriotism. His most prized possession is a family heirloom vase that made it home from the first World War after his brother was awarded it as a gift for saving a Belgian village from German attack. This is the vase that Robbie Turner breaks in the fountain, triggering the series of events that leads Briony to falsely accuse him of rape. We know Jack to be generous by the way he treats his staff. He keeps Grace Turner on as an employee after her husband abandons her and adopts Robbie like a son, funding his way through Cambridge. When Briony accuses Robbie of rape, he stands by his daughter's word and disowns the Turners from his family, his daughter Cecilia included.

Leon Tallis

Leon is Briony's older brother and the eldest of the three Tallis children. He is the typical 1930s playboy. Living in a period of jubilation and ease between the two wars in Europe, Leon enjoys the freedoms and carelessness of his social predicaments.

Leon is returning home from working in London to visit his family and it is his homecoming that has Briony so excited and inspires her to write a play for him. With him, he brings home his new found, and highly wealthy friend Paul Marshall. He is extremely close with his sister Cecilia and the idol of his younger sister Briony. Leon is also very close with Robbie and described as generally an overall well-rounded guy who is admired by everyone (61). Leon has the opportunity to work with his father at the ministry, but passes it up showing his carefree spirit in the face of patriotic responsibility. Instead he takes a job at the banks, "working and living for the nights and weekends" (101). Leon feels that no one in the world is naturally mean spirited, scheming, lying, or betraying (101). He is the voice of optimism and hope, albeit somewhat blind and ignorant, during this period leading up to the war in Europe. At the end of the novel, Leon is still alive, although very old and completely inept. He has survived four marriages, raised a number of children, and is still viewed as a very likable and admirable character by all who surround him.

Lola Quincey

Lola is the eldest sibling of the Tallis cousins who comes to spend the summer at their estate while her parents go through a divorce. She is 15, two years older than Briony, and right from the start, Briony takes a disliking approach to her fostered by jealousy of her coming to age faster. Lola, along with her two brothers, is living with the Tallis's because her father has returned to school at Oxford and her mother has run off to Paris with a lover. Ginger haired and freckled, Lola manipulates Briony from the start. She leverages her predicament and family situation to get what she wants from the Tallis home. Described as brisk and oblivious to anything beyond her own business, Lola is doomed to be like her mother--a deviant schemer to get what she wants and one who is tranquil and triumphant in competition. Lola is the victim of first sexual assault (assumed, but greatly hinted at in the narration) and then rape. When Briony witnesses the rape and scares off the assailant, she convinces Lola it was Robbie Turner who was her attacker. Lola appears to know this to be false, but never comes clean as to who she thinks her attacker is. We lose Lola until the final third of the novel when we learn she is marrying Paul Marshall, her attacker. Together, Lord and Lady Marshall enjoy tremendous financial success and involve themselves in many philanthropic work throughout England. Briony's final comments on Lola Quincey/Marshall are how young, vibrant, and healthy she appears despite being 80, and how Lola will without doubt outlive the ailing Briony.

Jackson and Pierrot Quincey

Jackson and Pierrot are Lola Quincey's younger twin brothers. They are 9 years old when they arrive at the Tallis home for the summer, and are at a complete loss with their situation and what is happening between their two parents, Hermione and Cecil Quincey. Forced to act in Briony's play, the twins are at first disagreeable. Soon thereafter, they come around and realize the play is the only thing they like about their new predicament. Looking similar to their older sister, ginger haired and freckled, the boys torture Lola and blame her for being stuck at the Tallis's for the summer. During a dinner when they learn the play is not going to be performed, the two twins decide to run away, leaving a note left behind on their dining room chair. This act triggers panic and a search party into the countryside night that leads to the opportunity for the crime of rape to be committed. The boys are eventually found alive and returned to the Tallis home by Robbie Turner. We don't hear about them again until the final chapter when Pierrot is overcome with emotion at the playing of The Tales of Arabella sixty-four years after that fateful night. We learn that Jackson dies in 1984, but both boys grew up to have very large families, as it is mostly Quincey grandchildren and great grandchildren who are there to celebrate Briony's 70th birthday.

Hermione and Cecil Quincey

The parents of Lola, Jackson, and Pierrot, they actually never appear in Atonement, except for once--at the wedding of Lola and Paul Marshall. Hermione is Emily Tallis's younger sister. She is somewhat of a free spirit and has no regard for social expectations. This side of her creates an odd bond between herself and Cecilia, who it is stated both admire the the other.

Hermione fleas the English countryside for France with a lover, leaving her husband to return to Oxford for schooling and her sister to look after her three children. It is said that Hermione "plotted her way out of a marriage and suffers a nervous breakdown" (62).

Danny and Mr. Hardman The Hardman's are workers on the Tallis estate. Danny receives more attention than his father in the tale because it is he who is accused of being Lola's attacker by Cecilia and Robbie Turner. While Danny Hardman is representative of the lower class pubescent male coming to terms with physical desires for the Tallis/Quincey girls, there is little evidence that attaches him to Lola's rape. Danny Hardman is fully exonerated by Briony when she informs Cecilia and Robbie that it was a man fitting the size and description of Paul Marshall whom she saw on top of Lola. Danny Hardman joins the British Navy to fight in the war against the Germans (262).

Grace Turner Grace is Robbie Turner's mother and a charlady for the Tallis household. Grace was married to a man, Ernest Turner, Jack Tallis employed as a laborer on the estate who abandons her and her son for no said reason. In order to make ends meet, Jack employs Grace as a helping hand and she acts as a clairvoyant on the side for the other employees of the home. After years of labor and raising Robbie on her own, Jack awards Grace complete ownership of the small cabin in which they live.

Grace is loved by all the Tallis children. She is a very kind woman and viewed as a mother-figure by both Leon and Cecilia. Upon the discovery that her son is being blamed for the rape of Lola Quincey, she is outraged and stands by his innocence.

Grandfather Harry Tallis Jack Tallis's father Henry, grew up in an ironmonger's shop and made his money patenting locks, bolts, and latches. He was the son of a farm laborer who changed his name from Cartwright to Tallis for reasons unknown (102).

Uncle Clem

Clem is Jack Tallis's older brother. He died during World War One, but not before saving an entire Belgian village by alerting them of a planned German bombing attack mere hours before it happens. As a show of gratitude, the town awards Clem with a vase, in which he is somehow able to continue to fight with while carrying. He sees the vase gets back to his brother in England safely. Clem, however, was not as lucky and never returns from the war.

Betty Betty is the head maid in the Tallis home. She is described as terrifying and forceful (23) as well as distant and firm (30). Betty is there to act as surrogate mother to the Tallis children and overseer to the rest of the maid staff.

Polly and Doll Both young maidservants from the nearby village who are employed at the Tallis home. Both are seen as "simple" (98) and quiet.

Auntie Venus Auntie Venus is not really an aunt, but a distant relative to the Tallis's (it is safe to assume on Emily's side) who comes to live with them at the house after she is old and ailing. Auntie Venus was a nurse in Canada for many years before returning to England to die. She lived in the household after her retirement, as an old bedridden lady, and dies when Cecilia was ten years old and Briony was just born. The nicest room in the house, with the view overlooking the lake and fountain, is referred to as 'Auntie Venus's room.'

Barbara Barbara is only mentioned in the book. This is the "sweet, dependable, well-conneted girl" both Jack and Emily Tallis wish Leon would marry. She has a castle in the highlands, and at the end of the book we learn that that is where Leon raised his family. Although Barbara is not mentioned specifically, once can assume that Jack and Emily got their wish.

Paul Marshall Paul is Leon Tallis's Cambridge/London pal. Leon brings Paul back to the home for the weekend dinner he has planned with his family. Paul comes off as smug and pretentious to the rest of the Tallis crowd. He appears to almost 'wish' a war because it will provide him with so much opportunity as a business man. His wishes come true, and as a result, Paul Marshall makes millions. There are some very subtle suggestions that Paul Marshall has his sites set out on Lola Quincey from the time he arrives at the home. Briony notices some heavy bruising on Lola's arms and some scratches on Paul's face. When Briony comes across the scene at the fountain where Lola is being raped, she has every reason to suspect it was Paul Marshall. Paul gets rich selling chocolate during the war and goes on to marry Lola. Later adorned Lord Marshall, the last we see of Paul is as a very old, very debilitated, very wealthy man.

P.C. Vockins The village investigator/policeman. He leads the inquiry into the rape of Lola Quincey. He used to be a trade unionist (137) and is very humble, sincere, and generous in his trade. He is generally liked by all people in his county. His brother is later commissioned as the ARP Warden for the county during the preparation for German invasion, and unlike P.C., the Warden is highly disliked because of his strict methods (263).

Corporal Nettle One of the two men traveling through Belgium and France with Robbie Turner. Corporal Nettle trusts Turner, even though his affection is represented in jest. He is a cockney and is labeled as being mentally inferior to Turner often making fun of him (202) but at the same time sticking close to him and respecting him realizing Turner is his ticket out of the war alive (205). After they are separated from their third man, Corporal Mace, Nettle and Turner are left to survive it on their own in Dunkirk waiting for the British Navy to show up and escort them home. Nettle does his best to look out for his friend, nursing him and feeding him on the beaches of Dunkirk. At the end of the book, Briony reveals to the reader that it was Corporal Nettle with whom she corresponded via letter to learn all the facts of Robbie's last days in the war.

Corporal Mace Corporal Mace is the third soldier marching with Turner and Nettle out of France. Very similar to Nettle, Mace is looked upon as being mentally inferior to Turner, yet hanging close with respect for his intelligence. In a final act of absurd heroism, Corporal Mace rescues a British RAF private from a mob beating by his own countrymen in a bar in Dunkirk.

Pretending to drown him, Mace picks up the lone soldier and carries him out of the bar to safety. We never hear from Corporal Mace again.

Henry and Jean-Marie Bonnet These are the pair of French brothers in the France countryside who shelter Turner, Nettle, and Mace during their march back to England. They are kind man who share food and wine with the three wounded British soldiers and supply them with rations before seeing them off.

Sister Marjorie Drummond Sister Drummond is the head nurse at the London hospital where Briony takes up a post. She is a vicious dictator who demands order, routine, and discipline and is feared by most of her staff (255-58).

Fiona Fiona is the only friend Briony makes at nursing training and in the hospital. The girls are quite different from one another, coming from different social classes and having very different motivations to be there. Most notably is the scene Briony and her share in the park just before the wounded arrive at the hospital. Both girls laugh in a sort of removed innocence before they are stunned back into the reality of the war by the hundreds of wounded men they frantically attend to.

Thierry Briony's dead husband. He is only mentioned in passing (340).

Glossary of Terms

Charlady/Charwoman A woman employed to clean houses.

Clairvoyant A person who claims to have a supernatural ability to perceive events in the future or beyond normal sensory contact.

Dunkirk A port in northern France. It was the scene of the evacuation of 335,000 Allied troops in 1940 by warships, requisitioned civilian ships, and a host of small boats while under constant German attack from the air.

MalvolioThe character Robbie plays in Cambridge, it is from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." Malvolio is defined as sort of straight and good. He despises all manner of fun and games, and wishes his world to be completely free of human sin, yet he behaves very foolishly, unlike his normal self, when he believes that Olivia loves him.

RAF This acronym stands for Royal Air Force (the UK's).

Stuka A type of German military aircraft (the Junkers Ju 87) designed for dive-bombing.

World War Two The war ran from 1939–45. The Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) were defeated by an alliance eventually including the United Kingdom and its dominions, the Soviet Union, and the U.S.

Major Themes

Guilt / Atonement The theme of guilt, forgiveness, and atonement should be extremely obvious to anyone who reads the book. The entire plot of the novel centers on a woman who devotes her entire life repenting a crime she committed while still a young girl. Articles of note that are not as obvious to the reader that have to do with this theme are things like, is Briony the only person who should feel guilty? Who else is at fault for the crime committed on that hot summer night in 1935? Where is Lola's guilt for not saying anything? What about Paul Marshall's--the real assailant who gets away with rape and stands silent while an innocent man goes to prison. Then there are all the adults in Part One of the novel. How is it that so many people who are capable of understanding so much more than a thirteen-year-old girl come to rely completely on her testimony? Should more not have been done in the investigation? The question is left open at the end of the book. Does Briony finally achieve her atonement by writing her story and keeping her lovers and allowing their love to survive?

The second layer to the guilt theme has to do with the history of literature. Aside from the crime she committed as a child, Briony feels guilty for her powers as a writer. She knows she has the autonomy to write whatever story she so chooses. Just like she could send Robbie to prison, she can make him survive the war. The reliance readers put in Briony to tell them "what really happened" leaves her feeling guilty about her life's work, and she projects that guilt onto the history of the English literature canon.

Literary Tradition

Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" marked a new literary form in Romanticism literature in that it was a story, inside a story, inside a story. At the very centre of the notable novel, the monster is telling his story in the first person to his creator who is telling his story to a ship captain who is writing his story to his sister who is the author of the book. Ian McEwan's "Atonement" plays with this layered-tradition: a story being told by one of the characters (not revealed until the end) in the third person, that shifts to the first person in the final section of the book when the reader realizes who the narrator is. During this chapter, we learn the story was told through letters between Cecilia and Robbie, and even correspondence between Corporal Nettles and Briony. It leaves the question very open: Whose story is this? That is the exact point Briony (or is it McEwan?) is trying to draw out. Who is capable of telling a complete story about "what really happened?" All authors are subject to their own interpretation of events and it is this in-empirical science that is literature that can cause so much power over other human beings. Look at all that is misinterpreted in writing. Briony doesn't understand the letter Robbie has sent Cecilia and sees it as a threat. Robbie places the wrong letter in the envelope triggering, and eventually indicting him for rape. The numerous references made to literature in the novel--too many to list. Robbie was a literature major, and has read and understood all the classic English novels and poets. Robbie is also the innocent victim in the book. And the most obvious, Briony admits to making up the happy ending of love in her story. When Briony admits to her reader that it has taken her sixty-four years and countless drafts to complete her book, the reader has to ask him/herself: "Which is the 'real' one?" Before the book even starts, the reader is given a Romantic novel quote--something out of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey." This sets the tone for a book that will be packed with literary allegory. Even the form of the book walks the reader through some of English lit's historical periods: Part One--Austen'esque Romanticism; Part Two--Historical Fiction War Story; Part Three--Victorian or Modern Memoir; and Part Four--Post Modern speculation and theory.

Perception/Misunderstanding

What happens in "Atonement" is all created by the imagination to misperceive observation. Briony is at a point where she is too young to fully grasp the adult world she is quickly becoming a part of, yet old enough to presume she understands her social environment on a mature level. This wavering, transient positioning in her psychological development, along with the circumstances she happens to observe (the fountain scene, the letter, the library scene, and the rape) all lead to a misappropriation of her emotions. Briony is still a child, there is no arguing that. Her obsession with order, her fantasizing about playwriting and fencing, and the seriousness with which she takes her play all represent her at a point where she is too young to see the world beyond her own existence. This flaw is not her fault. It is a part of the psychological maturing process. Notice how so much of the action takes place in a state where some senses are obstructed or absent while others are available. Briony can "see" the incident between Cecilia and Robbie at the fountain, but she can't hear it. Briony "reads" the word in the letter, but she doesn't "know" what it means. Briony "sees" the the sex in the library, but nobody "says" anything about it. And finally, Briony "hears" Lola being raped, but can't completely "see" what/who it is because it is dark. Part One is all about perception and misperception. Objects in this section are metaphors that serve as agents to this theme--windows, doorways, light, darkness, etc. Even the narration of the novel plays on this idea. The author is continuously having to go back and repeat the same episode through different eyes so the reader can get the whole picture. By doing this, Briony (as author) is trying her best to make up for what she did not understand as a child and what she struggles with as an author. That is, present the story from every single angle, and not just the writer's point of view. In achieving this, Briony hopes to atone for her misconception of events as a young girl.

Innocence

Arguments can be made on where the exact point is that Briony "loses her innocence." There are a few moments in Part One that can be attributed to such a notion: Was it when she saw the scene at the fountain? When she gives up on her play? When she reads the letter from Robbie to Cecilia? When she mistakenly observes Robbie and Cecilia making love in the library? When she witnesses Lola's rape? Or when she officially accuses Robbie of the assault to authorities? Each one of these is a plausible response. What is certain, however, is that somewhere during Part One of the novel, Briony ceases to exist as a protected child in this world and enters the exposed world of adulthood. The narration of part one, which we learn later to be Briony herself, holds nothing back in informing the reader of this post-awareness. Briony the character is too young to realize it at the time. She is caught in between world's. Look at the moment when the search parties take flight after the twins; Briony debates on whether she is old enough to search herself, or if she should stay back under the protection of her mother. She decides on the former and this decision results in something that forever changes her life and the lives of everyone around her. Even following the arrest of Robbie, Briony yearns for her mother's comfort. There is a greater loss of innocence at play here as well. War rips the entire country apart, and eventually the world. The bliss is innocence that was being enjoyed by Europe following "the war to end all wars" (WWI) is about to

be stripped away in force. This innocence is represented in Leon Tallis, a character who lives for the weekends in London, doesn't think there will be a war, and feels all people are primitively good-natured.

War

It is not typical to say that "war" is a theme in any book, but it is a very important part of "Atonement" and something that needs to be addressed as a separate component to the overall themes of the book. Ian McEwan is a known activist against war and as a writer who takes a personal interest in World War Two history. His father was a Major in the British Armed Forces and McEwan grew up in different areas of the world, in Army camps, while his father was serving his duties. There is an irony that Robbie Turner must fight in the war to exonerate himself from a crime he did not commit. This highlights the injustices of any war. As much as the story is a fictional tale, the scenes that involve the war, both in France in Part Two and in the hospitals in London in Part Three, are historically accurate. In particular, the horrors that the British Army faced as they awaited evacuation on the beaches of Dunkirk and the German planes continued their assault, is captured in extraordinary detail in "Atonement." Also, McEwan acknowledges a book he read in 1977 called "No Time For Romance" written by Lucilla Andrews that was the personal account of a nurse who served in the hospitals in London during the war. Briony's experiences in Part Three are directly inspired from that reading (for more information on this, see "Plagiarism" in the Additional Content of this Note). There is not too much to be said on it. The two world wars that took place in Europe in the first half of the 20th century are events that changed the course of human history. Ian McEwan's "Atonement" draws focus on the lasting effects these events had on the British psyche in hopes of assisting in the prevention of it from ever happening again.

Social Class The inequities and injustices of social class appear throughout the novel. The most obvious example is the relationship between Robbie Turner, son of the Tallis charwoman, and Cecilia Tallis, daughter of the ministry-employed and wealthy Jack Tallis. Recall that it is because Briony thinks her older sister is in grave danger of falling beneath her class that she sets out to protect her. Placing social distinction above love is common sense for Briony, and her condemnation of Robbie proves this faculty to hold up in the courts. As for Cecilia, she is the only character in the story to deal with these issues head on. After realizing her unfair behavior towards Robbie while at Cambridge together, Cecilia has the courage to announce her love for him when she defends the letter being passed around the living room for all to read as evidence of Robbie's "sex-maniac" ways. Even when he is arrested, she stands by him, and soon thereafter disowns her family to become a nurse living in a "terrible flat" in north London.

The only other person accused of the rape is the other servant, Danny Hardman. And even when his father provides a perfectly suitable alibi, it is not presented without question and doubt. Paul Marshall on the other hand, the filthy rich guest to the home who is actually responsible for the crime, is never even considered or questioned. As part of Briony's self-administered punishment, she joins the nurses in the lower class where she sees herself as a slave. This may be an act of penance and nobility during the war, but it's motives are questionable. Notice how by the end of the novel, Briony is admitted back up the ranks of class, having a chauffeur and a lovely flat in Regent's park. The reader is left wondering how much has really changed in the 65 years the novel has taken place.

Identity

Here is a question to ask: Who is Briony Tallis? Is she a child criminal? A repenting nurse? A writer? All of them? Is she a good person? An evil person? Any novel that stretches over a sixty-five year period is going to observe the characters go though periods of change and development. But "Atonement" works on a different level when it comes to identity as a theme. Briony Tallis has the imagination to make herself anything. When the story opens she is Briony the serious child, Briony the famous writer, and Arabella, the star of a play she has just written. Whenever Briony is upset, she wanders by herself to water, where she can daydream into any persona she wishes--a murderer, fencing champion, successful author (notice the water motif for this--a formless element).

In Part Three of the book, Briony has become a nurse, but she is given a badge with an incorrect first initial. She has been completely emasculated by the war and her social condition, as well as her guilt. When she sits with the dying French soldier, he thinks her to be someone else, and she goes along with his fantasy out of pity, but she tells him her real name in the end.

Other characters in the story too suffer identity problems. What is difference between Jackson and Pierrot; Nettles and Mace? The latter cannot determine if Turner is an educated Cambridge boy or a lower-class prisoner like themselves. Even Robbie himself doesn't know what he wants to be--a literature graduate come landscaper who is considering medical school, who has no father. The confusion of identity points out the confusion of coming into oneself at the golden age of lost innocence as well as what a nation is during war. Cecilia Tallis appears to be the only character who confidently knows her true self. As readers, we even have

to question who wrote the book--Briony Tallis or Ian McEwan? Themes of identity are common in coming-of-age novels. The fact that we get Briony at three distinctive points in her life complicates this overarching investigation into what makes up one's own sense of individuality and how confident that person has become with that outpouring image.

Quotes and Analysis

"'Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English: that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?'

They had reached the end of the gallery; and with tears of shame, she ran off to her own room."

No page #. Preceding page to Chapter One.

This long quote that precedes the novel is from Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey." The letter is to the young Catherine Morland, the heroine of Austen's tale who was a girl so much in love with Gothic fiction that she sends the worlds and lives of people around her into a tailspin by imagining a perfectly innocent man to be capable of doing terrible things. Catherine basically creates a Gothic tale to suit her own life. McEwan takes Austen's theme of the process of the dangers of transferring fiction to real life, but also of the process of atonement for such deeds.

When Catherine reads the letter, she has "tears of shame." Just like Briony, she becomes aware of her crime. Briony's atonement for her crime is to spend a lifetime writing her novel, condemned to write it over and over and over again. Once she discovers she is dying, she is finally able to complete the book, but in a different way that she ever had before. As she sees it, she fails to have the courage of pessimism, and rewrites a fictional fairy tale in which the lovers survive.

"A world could be made in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm. The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word--a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained."

Narration, Page 7

A major theme to Atonement, if not 'the' major theme, is the power of writing and a forensic look into the history of the literary tradition. A secondary theme, but one that is just as prominent, is the loos of innocence and the transposition from childhood into the adult world. This quote in the opening pages of the novel marries those two themes with precision and brevity.

Briony, because of her passion for writing, is aware even as a child of the power one has with the pen. Even at the age of thirteen, Briony can "make" a world in as little as "five pages." More importantly, she understands that as the writer, she has complete autonomy to "spoil" lives and restore "love." Not only does the child Briony understand this capacity over her characters, it excited her--the story literally "vibrates" in her hand.

What Briony is too young at this point to understand, is the difference between fictionally invented plots and characters and reality.

"What deep readings his modified sensibility might make of human suffering, of the self-destructive folly or sheer bad luck that drive men toward ill health! Birth, death, and frailty in between. Rise and fall--the was the doctor's business, and it was literature's too. He was thinking of the nineteenth-century novel. Broad tolerance and the long view, an inconspicuously warm heart and cool judgement; his kind of doctor would be alive to the monstrous patterns of fate, and to the vain and comic denial of the inevitable; he would press the enfeebled pulse, hear the expiring breath, feel the fevered hand begin to cool and reflect, in the manner that only literature and religion teach, on the puniness and nobility of mankind..."

Narration, Page 87

Robbie Turner is the "he" in this passage. When we meet Robbie, he is lost in searching for purpose in life. He has earned a degree in literature already from the university at Cambridge, is now working as a landscape artist at the Tallis manor, and is considering going back to medical school to become a doctor.

Throughout the book, McEwan draws the readers attention to his historical surveying of English literature. Here, the character Robbie considers the similarities between anatomical evaluation of humankind (the doctor's) and artistic analysis (literature's). The conclusion that is being made at the end of this paragraph is that only literature and religion have the power to reflect and teach humankind's most valuable lessons.

Finally, it is important to recognize that this paragraph is Robbie thinking about himself in the future, in 1962, when he will be fifty-years-old. He wonders what kind of man he will be and seems to appreciate that all the knowledge (medicine and literature) will not be enough to overcome the "puniness" of mankind.

"The very complexity of her feelings confirmed Briony in her view that she was entering an arena of adult emotion and dissembling from which her writing was bound to benefit. What fairy tale ever had so much by way of contradiction?"

Narration, Page 106

In the music world, in the tradition of American blues music, this moment is referred to as "the crossroads."

This is the opening sentence to Chapter Ten, the chapter in which Briony discovers Robbie and Cecilia making love in the study. There can be no greater incident to lose your innocence to then the witnessing of the older man you have an oedipal attraction to making love to your older sister. The quote informs the reader that Briony was aware of her transient stage, she has a "confirmed view" of her "entering" adulthood.

As difficult as this moment is for Briony, it is one "from which her writing was bound to benefit." McEwan draws reference to the personal sacrifice great artists and writers make for their art--trading complacency and simplicity for torture and brilliance.

"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."

Narration, Page 162

Without question, one of Atonement's major themes is guilt. At a young age, Briony commits an act that will haunt her for the rest of her life. This quote is not intended to be too deep or subliminal, it pretty much says it as it is.The guilt Briony has leads to a "self-torture" that stays with her for "a lifetime." The only metaphor that McEwan adds to this line is an allegory to religion. The rosary is a string of beads used in both Catholicism and Islam. Religions in general use shame and guilt to oppress human desire, invoke fear, and maintain order. By comparing Briony's guilt to the beads on a rosary and a "loop" (a shape with no beginning or end), the author is able emphasize the eternity of Briony's guilt.

"I'll wait for you was elemental. It was the reason he had survived. It was the ordinary way of saying she would refuse all other men. Only you. Come back."

Narration, Page 249

"Come back" are the words shared between Cecilia and Robbie that Briony (as author) utilizes as a motif to their love, hence achieving her atonement. There is no way Briony would have been able to know what her older sister said to Robbie Turner on the driveway after his arrest before he was escorted off by police. Regardless, because Briony aims to make their love "eternal" in her story about her crime and the consequences thereafter, she focuses in on a phrase she discovered in a letter from Briony to Robbie while he was off fighting in the war.

These words, "come back," are also the words Cecilia used to say to Briony when she was having a nightmare and would wake up screaming as a little girl. On a second level, Briony is wishing her older sister would use them on her instead of Robbie, exercising the power to wake her from this nightmare she began by falsely testifying against an innocent person. By making the phrase unique to

Cecilia and Robbie, and never hearing them directed to her again, the fictional author is able to achieve the "atonement" she sets out to and reach some sort of peace of mind.

"This was her student life now, these four years, this enveloping regime, and she had no will, no freedom to leave. She was abandoning herself to a life of strictures, rules, obedience, housework, and a constant fear of disapproval. She was one of a batch of probationers--there was intake every few months--and she had no identity beyond her badge."

Narration, Page 260

A secondary theme to the book is identity. In the opening pages of the novel, Briony daydreams about being a famous writer, a name that is recognized throughout all of London for her magnificent ability at playwriting. In London, at the age of 18, she has been self-demoted to a slave, "a life of strictures, rules, obedience, housework, and a constant fear of disapproval." But what is even worse for her, is that she lives in a world where her name does not even exist.

As a self punishment, Briony decides to give up all the luxuries of an upper-class life. No Cambridge, no fancy flat to live in, no traveling, no job at the ministry. Briony hopes that her duties as a nurse during the war will serve as some sort of penance towards her. Yet the cost of doing so, is a complete stripping of her identity--she fails to exist as "Briony"--with no will nor freedom to go back.

"From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing that she had always known, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended."

Narration, Page 287

The horrors of war is a theme in Atonement that enters the book in Part Two and then never really leaves. On the night of the crime, England was still at peace with the rest of Europe, and with the exception of Jack Tallis, war hadn't made its way into the lives of any of the characters in the books. World War Two serves as some sort of macrocosmic loss of innocence to all of Europe.

The passage above is a juxtaposition. Briony Tallis "easily tore" the lives of Cecilia and Robbie Turner apart, a crime that is "not easily mended." WWII is doing the same thing to all of Europe (and mankind for that matter). Nursing during the war and witnessing body parts existing like broken car parts or the limbs of trees, Briony enters a new stage of experience--a person is just as susceptible to destruction (physical or mental) as any other object on the planet, and so much of the time, this injury is caused by fellow man (her's to Robbie, and Hitler's to the soldiers she cares for).

"We catch this young girl at the dawn of her selfhood. One is intrigued by her resolve to abandon the fairy stories and homemade folktales and plays she has been writing (how much nicer if we had the flavor of one) but she may have thrown the baby of fictional technique out with the folktale water. For all the fine rhythms and nice observations, nothing much happens after a beginning that has such promise."

CC, in a letter to Briony, Page 295

This paragraph is in a rejection letter from "CC" to Briony regarding her story "Two Figures by a Fountain" that she submitted for publishing. CC is most likely Cyril Connolly, editor of Horizon (a literary journal in London at the time). The theme here is the interrogation of history and how national myths are inscribed into storytelling as well as the construction of literary tradition. The advice notes that the author (Briony) wants to get rid of the "folktales" but risks abandoning the "fictional technique" altogether.

We can conclude that Briony takes Connolly's advice. Look at the changes made from Part One to London, 1999. Assuming Part One of Atonement is the story ("Two Figures by a Fountain") that Briony has sent into Horizon and Connolly is advising on, we can see the obvious changes the book goes through from cover-to-cover, touching on so many other traditional fictional styles while abandoning the "fairy tale" technique after Briony is a child.

"The problem these fifty-nine years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all."

Briony Tallis, Page 350-51

This paragraph, spoken by the 77 year old Briony Tallis in memoir form, married the two major themes of the novel: literary tradition and atonement. Briony struggles with her story and how to end it. A story that will be her last but should have been her first, our heroine admits the difficulty she had in deciding what to do with Robbie and Cecilia.

A rephrasing of the basic question Briony struggles with is this: How can I be rewarded my forgiveness if I am the one who gets to decide what happens? In other words, one cannot self-ascribe atonement. She can seek it, but is must be granted by the one who has been wronged or injured. Being author of the story places Briony in a bind because of her "absolute power to decide outcomes." She asks if she is not "also God?" meaning to the characters and episodes in her book. She is. As author she has the power to do anything to anyone or any situation. Recognizing this power, Briony concludes that there can be "no atonement for God or novelists," and only the attempt matters.

Part One: Chapter One

Summary:

Atonement starts off by introducing the reader to the main character, Briony Tallis who is a 13 year old ambitious and imaginative writer with dreams and visions of becoming famous one day. Briony has written and prepared a play for her older brother Leon, who is returning home from London, where he lives and works, for a weekend with his family. Three cousins from the north arrive, Lola, Jackson, and Pierrot, to spend the summer at the Tallis home while their parents (Hermione and Cecil Quincey) are supposedly attempting to work out their differences. Briony giver mother a copy of the play she has written called "The Trials of Arabella." Her mother, Emily Tallis, likes the play when reading it, as does her sister Cecilia, although somewhat condescendingly. As soon as her cousins arrive, Briony begins to assign them roles and attempts to direct them in the upcoming performance that is to be put on for her brother the next evening (for a complete description of the play, see the bottom of page 4). Lola, two years older than Briony, challenges the director/playwright (and manipulates her) for the lead part of Arabella in the play, which Briony finally secedes after coercing her three cousins to take part. Lola further mocks the lines in the play adding a distancing animosity between the two female cousins and the twins pay little to no attention to Briony's direction. Collectively, this destroys Briony’s vision of a spotlighted moment and perfect evening prepared for her brother’s return.

Analysis:

The play Briony sets out to direct and perform is noted as having a high point of satisfaction when her mother reads it, and everything else about it would be "dreams and frustrations." This is a obvious foreshadowing of the mood of self-retribution and theme of lost innocence to the book. Immediately, the notion of literary tradition is discussed, McEwan attaches fairytale and folk lore to childhood simplicity. Briony feels trapped in her younger body, comparing her older sister's enthusiasm to the play as more of condescension than sincerity. The introduction to relationships and love in the book is also sour. We have Emily and Jack Tallis who never see each other, and Hermione and Cecil Quincey, who are going through a divorce, sending their children to be looked after by the Talis's. This an opportunity for McEwan to set the tale of bitter love in others, and then juxtaposing Cecilia and Robbie's love as being sublime and sweet. The play Briony writes, "The Trials of Arabella" are a metaphor for what is about to come of Briony. The "spontaneous" (remember, all of Part One happens in a day) child is "inexperienced" and about to commit a crime that will see the world "rise up and tread on her."

Part One: Chapter Two

Summary:

The chapter begins with an in-depth description of the older female Tallis sibling Cecilia. It is stated that Cecilia has great desires to be needed at home, but unfortunately, just isn’t. Despite her uselessness to the rest of the family, she does not want to go away.

Cecilia has had a long-term relationship with Robbie (since they were 7) including attending Cambridge University together. While there, Cecilia and Robbie run in different circles because of a distinct separation in class (Robbie is the son of the Tallis charlady, Grace Turner). This separation in friendship may have built up some suppressed anger towards Cecilia from Robbie because of her family wealth and his lack thereof, as well as a loss of in loyalty. Leon is coming home from London with a friend, Paul Marshall, whom Cecilia dotes upon from afar, without ever having met him. In her efforts to impress him, she spends an

extraordinary effort preparing a vase of flowers for his room. The vase is a family heirloom from Mr. Tallis’s brother Lieutenant Clem Tallis, who saw it sent to the Tallis estate from Verdun where it was awarded to him from a small village for saving them from an attack. Clem died in battle, but the vase made it home. When Cecilia prepares to fill the vase with water from the fountain, Robbie insists on helping her and the two of them drop the vase into the fountain and it breaks. Robbie assumes full responsibility for the breaking of the vase, and Cecilia gets undressed to swim into the fountain and retrieve the broken pieces.

Analysis:

The introduction of Cecilia Tallis and Robbie Turner are what allows the author to begin his theme of social class and gender roles in the novel. While Cecilia wants to be "needed" at home (a maternal instinct) she is aware that she also has the education and skills to be independent and part of London's working class. In the years leading up to World War Two, feminism was not a priority in Europe. It wasn't until the war, when all the men went overseas to fight, that feminism began to flourish. Cecilia is not aware of why she treats Robbie so poorly, that her efforts to "impress" Paul Marshall are really aimed towards Robbie. She hasn't yet realized that it is a misunderstanding of her love towards him that causes her to treat him so poorly. The vase is a symbol that all things traditional and perfect in the Tallis home are about to break. Here we have Robbie, a man who enjoys landscaping and making plants natural in their beautiful state, separated from Cecilia, who seeks to take the flowers and place them in her room, removing them for their natural place. The vase is the object that bridges them, but before it can ever be put into use, it is broken. When Cecilia reemerges from retrieving the broken piece of ceramic, her "movements are savage" and she "banishes" Robbie with her eyes. Robbie, recognizing her fury and his punishment, attempts to "quell" the rolling water, a rather impossible task. Water is an avid symbol throughout the book, as we read on to discover. Robbie is constantly betrayed by the one element that is intended to both cleanse him and be his source of life.

Part One: Chapter Three

Summary:

The nine year old twin Jackson pees his bed in the night and is forced to launder the sheets himself, which takes hours and cuts into Briony’s scheduled rehearsal time, frustrating her immensely. Nothing is going as planned for the young perfectionist. Lola shows up at the nursery very adult-like, maturing rapidly right before Briony’s eyes, forcing her to consider her own slow-growing pace. Briony begins to suspect that Lola is out to destroy her play intentionally. The play’s rehearsal is a bust, and everyone leaves Briony alone in the upstairs room to consider her predicament. It is here we get a glimpse into the young writer’s mind as she postulates reality, her imagination, and individualism as “unbearably complicated” (34). Briony then realizes she should abandon the play and write Leon a story instead. Comparing play to story form, she concludes a story is much easier to convey than a play.

Deep in her self-absorbtion, Briony gazes out the window and observes from a far distance, the fountain scene between Cecilia and Robbie. Too young to fully comprehend what she is witnessing, Briony mistakes the scene for Robbie proposing to Cecilia and having complete command over her, forcing her to disrobe and “drown herself” so he can save her and have her hand in marriage. She bears this story in comparison to a story she had once written. Briony’s active imagination begins to run wild on her. She wonders if Robbie is blackmailing her older sister, threatening her, and if he has some sort of invisible power over her (36). She is aware she does “not understand” completely, and must “just watch” (37) in order to attach sense to what she sees. Briony concludes in her mind that this is not a fairy tale world and that chance brought her to the window to witness the extraordinary event, and that this is the stuff of real-life, adult world. In the final two paragraphs of the chapter are written, the narrator reveals to be writing from “six decades later.” As the much older Briony (the revealed author of the story) looks back on the 1935 incident, she compares her account of an event to the possible reality of it, concluding: “Truth had become as ghostly as invention” (39).

Analysis:

Briony's decision to abandon the play and work on a story will come back to haunt her for the rest of her life. Choosing to step out of the childish folktale mentality and into the adult realm of story telling leads Briony's imagination to play tricks on her when she witnesses the fountain scene between Cecilia and Robbie. Recall that it is in the "nursery" where the rehearsals are taking place, and it is Lola who appears enters it that morning "in the guise of the adult she considered herself at heart to be." Everything around Briony is growing up, but her. Seeing her sister stand in her underwear, soaking wet in front of Robbie, sets her mind loose and "one mystery breeds another." Briony discovers that "the world, the social world, is unbearably complicated." Briony accepts that

what she sees, she "doesn't understand" but decides to write the story anyway. Here, the narration gets complicated. When reading the first time, one is not aware that the narrator is Briony 77 year old self. Thinking it to be an omniscient, separated voice, the narration into the power of the author is determined to be profound, but not nearly as revealing. Once having read the entire book and realizing it is Briony who is writing it sixty-four years later, the passage, "It wasn't only wickedness and scheming ... the only moral a story need have" (38) carries that much more weight. By the end of the chapter, we are told "no doubt that some sort of revelation occurred," that "the truth had become as ghostly as invention." These phrases should trigger to the reader that this story will be as much about the inventing and recording of it as it is about its truth.

Part One: Chapter Four

Summary:

Cecilia mends the vase and replaces it in Aunt Venus’s room without anyone noticing the break. She then notices Briony crying in the front hall and destroying her playbill. She attempts to comfort her little sister, just like she has always done in the past. Briony, determined her play is “a mistake,” storms out of the house and into the garden to weep. Cecilia lets her baby sister go to work it out on her own and visits Aunt Venus’s room and observes the boys (Leon and Paul, with Danny Hardman driving) approaching the house. Before they can reach the Tallis home, they run into Robbie Turner in the driveway. Leon and Paul enter the house with Danny carrying the bags. Cecilia greets them and her and Paul immediately begin flirting. Cecilia also notices the maturity of Danny Hardman and ponders whether or not he has a crush on Lola. Cecilia, Leon, and Paul sit around the pool where Paul indulges in self-centered monologues about his business and Cecilia and Leon get into an argument because Leon has invited Robbie to join them at dinner. The thoughts of Robbie cause her to investigate the personality of Paul Marshall a littler more closely, and she concludes: “How deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid” (47). Eventually, the argument between Cecilia and her dear brother Leon subsides, and all three go inside for pre-dinner cocktails.

Analysis:

When Cecilia realizes that her play is child's work and her sister is being (assumedly) blackmailed by both a man of lower class and the man whom she has a crush on, she leaves the house to seek refuge in the temple down by the lake on the Tallis estate. As stated earlier, water is a very important symbolic motif that appears often in Atonement. It is near water where everything Briony experiences as a part of her loss of innocence. Cecilia's attempt to save her little sister from "self destruction" fails. The fact that she no longer has the soothing maternal powers of an older sibling demonstrates the exit from childhood and entry from adulthood for Briony. Cecilia lets this pass without incident. Her focus is on her emotions for Robbie and trying to figure out what drove her to such frivolous action down at the fountain. Her "annoyance" with Leon's failure to "know Robbie's disgrace" is misdirected, and should be aimed at her own failures of awareness. Upon meeting Paul Marshall, Cecilia begins to recognize her attraction for genuineness over class. She thinks it would be "self-destructive" to marry someone so "unfathomably stupid." Soon thereafter, Cecilia is "genuinely annoyed" with Paul Marshall when he smugly insults "grammar school types" he met while at Oxford.By the end of the chapter, Cecilia is becoming aware of that phoniness of her world. When she stands back to take in the entire scene of her brother, Paul Marshall, the lake, the house, the garden, it appears "carved" and "fixed." She knows she wants out, but she doesn't know how to get there.

Part One: Chapter Five Summary:

Briony has completely given up on her play and abandons rehearsal with no real explanation, just that she is frustrated that her visions can’t be met. Lola watches out the window as Briony goes to the edge of the lake to sulk. Lola goes into Auntie Venus’s room and sees Paul’s luggage. It reminds her of her dad. She then returns to the playing room where the twins express missing home and their parents and not liking the Tallis residence one bit. They cry and Lola attempts to console them, suggesting “it will be all right.” Jackson responds that it will not, because it’s a divorce, even though none of them know what that really means, rather just repeating an adult word they have heard tossed about when discussing their mother and father. Paul Marshall is discovered listening at the door (not concealingly) and enters to introduce himself. He mentions he has read about the Quincey’s in the papers, but ensures the children they are loved and their folks are good people. He then notices Lola to be a pubescent, developing young woman and flirts with her. Paul tells them of his chocolate factory and ensures the children that there “will be a war.”

Analysis:

The main analysis to be taken away from this chapter is how much Lola yearns for male presence in the absence of her father, and Paul Marshall's underlying motives in taking an interest in the Quincey children predicament. Once again, we have a scene witnessed through a window. This time it is Lola who watches Briony head down to the water, unaware of a hatred so deep that Briony will soon daydream about beheading her older cousin. The discovery of Paul Marshall's luggage in Auntie Venus's room reminds Lola of her father. Shortly thereafter, she turns to the nursery to pretty her hair and make-up. Location (nursery) and motivation (oedipal desires) are both hinted at in this scene. When her brother's return to the nursery and argue about the divorce of their parents, it is Lola's opportunity to exercise some of her new maternal jurisdiction over the two boys, telling them they shall "never ever use that word again." Paul Marshall is discovered voyeuristically spying on Lola in her role of pseudo-mother. The fact that the two meet in a nursery when Lola is attempting to demonstrate a maturity and personality she has not yet reached emphasizes the book's theme of loss innocence. Marshall sees the young girl as a Pre-Raphaellite princess, and she attempts to talk to him of high-society topics--fashion and the theater. It is Paul who informs of the inevitable war and his intentions to get rich off it. Jackson and Pierrot act as a metaphor for the innocent English mind at the time. In 1935, some wished to believe war could be avoided. Marshall, with his certainty that their father is wrong, is the grim voice of truth. All is about to fall apart for the Quincey's and for England. The fact that chocolate (a child's treat) is going to be used in war (adult horror) adds further to McEwan's metaphor.

Part One: Chapter Six and Seven

Summary:

Chapter 6 provides the reader with an intimate profile of Emily Tallis. We also learn a little more about Leon's life and character, for example that he has prospects to work with his father, but he passes on them to stay in the bank. Emily considers the fat of her eldest daughter. She concludes that Cecilia’s three years at Girton (women’s college at Cambridge) has made her “an impossible prospect” as wife. Emily battles her migraine and plots on how to prepare for an appearance at dinner. “She would soothe the household, which seemed to her, from the sickly dimness of the bedroom, like a troubled and sparsely populated continent from whose forested vastness competing elements made claims and counterclaims upon her restless attention” (67).

Chapter 7 is also a short chapter that has Briony at the temple that rests on the island in the middle of the manmade lake of the Tallis property. While here, she daydreams herself to hurting/killing Lola. She also meditates that she is a fencing champion and has given up writing altogether. It is revealed through Briony's first person narrative that Leon has only been gone three months (71). There is another reference made to the “come back” phrase that Cecilia used to say to Briony when she would wake from a bad dream (72). Briony snaps from her daydream and decides to stand on the bridge over the brook and not do anything until something happens to her.

Analysis:

In these two chapters we get a heavy dose of the social class/gender theme and Briony's relationship with water. Firstly, a biographical look into Emily Tallis's life demonstrates how much has changed in the role of women in society over the span of one generation. Emily was educated at home and feels a woman's role at the varsity to be "childish." At the same time, her challenge to "soothe the household" in the absence of her husband and despite a migraine illustrates the responsibilities she feels she has a female. She is also aware of the "terrible blow" the collapse of the play would be to Briony and wishes she could do more to comfort her. It is this loss of maternal power that will open the doors for Briony's crime. On the top of page 64, the narrator describes how Briony "would have gone out with her mood, probably to be by water, by the pool, or the lake, or perhaps she had gone as far as the river." This relationship between Briony and water (and water in the book in general) is key to analyzing Briony's character. While water is meant to be her place of safety, solemnity, and refuge, it has deceived her once today already, and will again come nightfall. Just like Robbie Turner, the source of life and cleansing are misleading these two characters. By Chapter seven we join Briony in her temperamental state at the temple. It is key here that Briony turns to a chapel that has "grown old before its time and let itself go." The personification of a temple that has "no one to care for it, no one to look up to," presents the idea that not only can religion and refuge avoid the tragedy that is about to spread across all of Europe. Briony, in her anger, slashes away at "nettles" but soon gets bored of this play "without a story imposing itself." She daydreams she is a fencing champion of the world and even goes far enough to behead her older cousin. Later on in the novel, it is Robbie Turner's sidekick

during his Odyssey back to Dunkirk--"Nettles"--who provides the older version of Briony with the necessary information to write her atonement. The imposition of the necessity for story from the nettles adds further complication to Briony's statement about writer as God, with complete autonomy over the story to kill and save who she sees fit. Furthermore, this time it is Briony being spied upon, by Lola, who can see her near the temple from the same second story window that gives birth to Briony's imagination about Robbie and Cecilia. Once again, Briony is unable to separate myth from reality. Briony is caught in a moment of "oblivious daydreaming" that leads to a "coming back" to reality. It is during the transient moment between the daydreaming and the coming back where Briony loses her "godly power of creation." The narrator flat out tells the reader that "part of the daydreaming enticement is the illusion that she was helpless before its logic." Unable to differentiate between the two realms will cause Briony to confuse what she "sees" and what she "believes" when convicting Robbie Turner of rape.

Part One: Chapter Eight

Summary:

This chapter is devoted to Robbie Turner. It starts off with him in his bathtub daydreaming about what he saw earlier in the day—Cecilia disrobing, diving into the fountain, and then standing before him soaking wet in her underwear. Robbie contemplates his feelings towards Cecilia and whether or not he should have accepted Leon’s invitations to dinner. Regardless, he prepares for the occasion. He feels Cecilia is restless in that environment and is out to humiliate him. Robbie concludes that Cecilia was also a bit sadistic in her anger, knowing perfectly well what she was up to when she got nearly naked in front of him. He writes Cecilia an apology letter for breaking the vase. He has trouble doing this, finding the right words, even reaching into his deepest desires and typing sexual wishes to her at the bottom of one of the drafts (80). We learn more about the background of Robbie's parents as well—Grace and Ernest Turner. Ernest walked out on the family when Robbie was six, with no explanation and has never been seen since. Grace assumes he was sent to the front of WWI and killed, since there is no other explanation as to why he would take no interest in his own son. Ernest was Jack Tallis’s gardener. When he abandoned his family, Jack employed Grace at the house as a cleaner and eventually handed over the cabin to her. She continued on the house staff regardless. Robbie shares a quick conversation with his mother before leaving the cabin to head to dinner. En route, he spots Briony who is still standing on the bridge over the lake on the road into the Tallis property. Robbie asks Briony to run ahead and pass the note to Cecilia, thinking this would avoid him giving it to her in front of others, and allow her some time to absorb its contents in private before facing him. Briony obliges and runs ahead and into the home with Robbie’s apology note. As she runs off, Robbie realizes he has mistakenly placed the wrong letter in the envelope. The obscene letter is on its way to Cecilia’s hand while the polite and apologetic hand-written note remains in his bedroom.

Analysis:

Robbie is aware of his position in the hierarchy of social class, but it is stated that "he liked people to know he didn't care." Robbie's view of social class, one that takes into consideration his own "politics," "scientifically based theories," and a "forced self-certainty" demonstrates both the character's humility and the author's opinion on all human beings as nothing more than "material objects" made up from the same matter. Robbie considers her social predicament in the face of his feelings towards Cecilia and understands her attempt to "humiliate" him. This introduces yet another recurring theme in McEwan's novel. Robbie, in a self-massochist way, enjoys the humiliation just as Briony will when she becomes a nurse as part of her penance for her crime.

We also learn that Robbie has a deep relationship with literature. This places him on the same level of as the older, narrating Briony Tallis. He has a typewriter he frequently uses, he is surrounded by books (both scientific/medical and classic literature) and he acted in a Shakespeare play. The character he played, Malvolio from "Twelfth Night," is a literary allusion made to illustrate his views towards life and love. Shakespeare's Malvolio was a character of strict and noble upbringing. He avoids to be involved in the pettiness of the world around him. But when he falls in love with Olivia, he forgets his ways and acts foolishly which leads to conflict. Similarly, Robbie is about to write a letter in an uncharacteristic state that will lead to conflict with the rest of the Tallis family and change his life forever. Notice how Robbie has difficulty writing his "apology" letter to Cecilia, going through "many drafts" before he is able to come on one he feels is right. This foreshadows Briony's search for atonement with her "apology" novel and the 64 years and numerous drafts it takes her to complete. Briony, as narrator, is relating Robbie's interest and struggle in writing to her own, perhaps justifying her sense of guilt. At the bottom of page 85, the narrator explains how Robbie too, is the author of a "story ... with himself as a hero." Finally, when Robbie sees Briony on the bridge, he at first considers her to be a supernatural being, a spectral "white shape." As she runs off towards the manor with his letter in tow, she is a "distant rhombus of

ocher light." Briony, as a supernatural presence and deliverer of desire in textual form, represents the release of subliminal, or Freudian, desires into the real world--an act that cannot be undone.

Part One: Chapter Nine

Summary:

Cecilia is getting ready for the dinner, and she is struggling trying to find something to wear. After she finally decides on her favorite dress, she exits her room and discovers Jackson and Pierrot fighting in the hallway over a pair of socks, the only pair between them. Cecilia goes into the Quincey room and cleans it for the boys, solving their problem by borrowing a pair of socks from Briony’s room. While there, she maternally soothes the twins as they sadly express their desire to go home. Eventually, Cecilia makes it to the kitchen where the preparation for Leon’s requested roast has all the hands on deck and the tensions high. She soon abandons the housing staff, taking her mother with her, and joins her brother for a drink and walk in the garden as they catch up on each other’s lives over the last three months. It is during this chat that Cecilia realizes she is seeking an “adventure” and “excitement” (97) of her own. After their walk, Leon and Cecilia return to the home where Briony is impatiently waiting for them. When Briony sees her brother, she shrieks, and runs into his arms in elation. She then passes Cecilia the folded note, which is read by Cecilia as Briony continues to swoon in her big brother’s arms. Cecilia reads the note (but we, as readers, are kept unaware of its contents) and is enlightened of her oppressed love for Robbie Turner: “Of course, of course. How had she not seen it? Everything was explained. The whole day, the weeks before, her childhood. A lifetime. It was clear to her now. Why else take so long to choose a dress, or fight over a vase, or find everything so different, or be unable to leave? What had made her so blind, so obtuse?” (105). It then dawns on her that the note was passed without an envelope, which seems odd. She attempts to ask Briony if it was given to her sealed. She repeats her inquiry a second time and Briony ignores her both times.

Analysis:

Cecilia's attempt, and success, to calm the twins after their fight over the socks represents her loss as a woman in this world. Educated and desiring "excitement and adventure," she is unable to quell her primitive instincts as female. The twins are interchangeable, just like Mace and Nettles from Part Two. These young boys foreshadow the young soldiers who will be stuck in a world over which they have no control; victims of a social predicament they cannot escape. The twins can't get on with their socks, Mace and Nettles gripe about their boots. All four males desire nothing more than to "go home," but they can't and this has them lost. At the centre of the chapter, we get a deeper look into the character of Leon Tallis. Described as viewing "no one as mean-spirited, no one schemed or lied or betrayed," is representative of Britain's handling of Hitler and the Germans preceding the war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was often accused of being too soft and appeasing to many of Germany's requests and attacks before the war spread continent-wide. Leon's refusal to see the indecency and tyranny in mankind reflects Chamberlain's pacifying political strategy. The theme of identity in the novel is briefly touched upon in this chapter as well, when the reader learns that the Tallis grandfather was born under a different name, Cartwright, and no one knows when and why it was changed. This limits the roots of the Tallis home further complicating Briony's own struggle with who she is--fictional writer or true historian.

Part One: Chapter Ten

Summary:

Briony runs away from her sister and up to her room to get ready for dinner. While there, she tries to write. We learn, without doubt, that Briony opened the letter and discovered the obscenity in its closing sentences (Robbie writes: "In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long."). The “c”word was foreign to her, but she correctly assumes its meaning. As she sits and wonders what to do next, Lola enters her room. Briony is aware that the letter along with the fountain incident has been a loss of innocence for her, and she is now ready to become the “adult” writer she has always wanted to be. Lola begins crying because her brothers are abusing her, mistaking their reason for being stuck in the Tallis house as her fault, and not that of their parents. Briony consoles Lola and they have a bonding moment, moving towards friends instead of enemies. As part to get her mind off her parents and brothers and as part for the need to tell someone, Briony shares the contents of the letter with Lola. Lola identifies Robbie as a “maniac” and suggests they go directly to the police. Lola heads down to dine after being summoned by Emily, Briony stays to fix her hair and face. Eventually, she makes it downstairs but instead of going

directly to the dining room, she enters her father’s study after hearing a scraping noise and a thump come from within. Briony enters the study and discovers Robbie and Cecilia pinned up in the corner. Her perception is that of an attack and that her sister is being held there against her will. Her sister’s dress is above her knees, Robbie has a hold of her hair and her forearm, and she is being pressed into the corner. Briony calls her sister’s name, who gets out of the compromising position and leaves the study without saying anything to Briony. Briony is left in there alone with Robbie who does not acknowledge her and goes about straitening out his clothes.

Analysis:

After reading the letter, Chapter Ten begins with that exact moment when Briony's innocence is taken from her forever. The opening sentence of the chapter confirms this notion. What is important to note however, is that Briony is still coming across parts of the adult world that she does not fully understand. Just like the scene she witnessed at the fountain from a distance, this time it is a word she reads. She thinks she knows what it means (in fact, she is correct in her assumption), but she is unsure. She interprets the word as "almost onomatopoeic" and this "disgusts her profoundly." The reading of the letter leads to her imagination to conclude that her older sister is being "threatened." Briony's inability to understand the adult world as a child is evident in her act of opening and reading a letter not addressed to her--something a mature adult would not do. Briony desires to lose herself in the "unfolding of an irresistible idea." This passion for articulation desires onto page is something that she feels herself and Robbie share. However, where Robbie is in tune with the chaos of desire, Briony seeks to "impose order" to it, which will be the tragic flaw in her writing and life (something that is mentioned in the rejection letter from C.C. in Part Three which she must overcome to be a successful writer). Her resolve is a determination to "never forgive Robbie and his disgusting mind." This is ironic for a heroine who spends her own life seeking forgiveness of her own. Briony's decision to share her information with Lola is what defines her a story-teller. There is a necessity for her to "share a secret" and she does so very easily with the one person she actually hates. Again, it is irony that is presented: Briony shares this secret as a thirteen-year-old with ease and spends the rest of her life struggling with the sharing of another secret, that is the crime she committed. A book about what is "imagined" and what is "true" pivots on the final scenes of Chapter Ten (the library love-making) and Chapter Thirteen (the rape). Many scenes in the novel are left open to interpretation, and Briony's young and creative mind repeatedly plays tricks on her. She trusts her literary instincts more than her sensory perception. The 'c' word in the letter must mean rape in the library. She forgets that Robbie and Cecilia are real people in the library and instead uses them as a source material for her imagination.

Part One: Chapter Eleven

Summary:

This long chapter covers the dinner that everyone has been anticipating. All the players are seated around the table, and the absence of a male patriarch (Jack Tallis) leads to awkward silence at the beginning of the meal. Robbie brings up the recent heat wave and Leon, innocently, chimes in with how the heat causes people to do something bad, to break rules. He then asks Briony if she has done anything bad today, and she redirects to her sister and Robbie. During the dinner, Robbie’s mind flashes back to the recent events that took place since he arrived at the Tallis household. Deciding to man-up and take immediate responsibility for the shameful letter to Cecilia, he entered the home where Cecilia led him into the library/study. Thinking he was being taken there to be scolded or slapped, it is after a while that he realized Cecilia has led him there as an invitation to privacy. Alone together in the study, Cecilia explains how Briony has read the letter and Robbie is extremely apologetic. As readers, we are still unaware which letter Cecilia has read, as we don’t know if Briony switched them with one of her own. But we do know Robbie thinks Cecilia has read and is referring to the obscene letter. Cecilia confesses a blindness and awakening to her own feelings towards Robbie after reading the letter, and intentionally corners herself in the darkness of the library, where they cannot be heard. She invites him to take her, which he does, and they begin to make love in the library. It is clear that this is Cecilia’s first time. During the lovemaking, Cecilia expresses she hears a noise. They stop and notice Briony standing and observing their actions. Cecilia dashes out of the library leaving Robbie standing there stunned to deal with Briony, which he avoids doing. The narrative then moves back to real time and the meal they are all having. Jackson and Pierrot excuse themselves from the table and Briony notices the socks they are wearing. She uses this incident to expel her anger and is quickly put in her place by Cecilia who also uses this incident to expel her anger towards her little sister. Briony goes on to explain to her mother, and the rest of the table guests, how deviant and terrible the twins are to their older sister, pointing out bruises and scratches they have left all over her body. Lola begins to cry. Paul Marshall mysteriously attempts to play the incident off and explains how he was the one to break it up. This entire episode between Lola and

Paul is all very strange. Briony then notices a letter left on one of the twins’ chairs. She gives it to Emily to be read and it is a note from the twins saying they don’t like it at the Tallis home and are running away. This upsets Robbie greatly as he was looking extremely forward to the meal being over and sneaking Cecilia off outside to finish what they started. Search parties are organized. Paul Marshall walks off by himself with Leon and Cecilia teaming up to search other areas. Briony is afraid to be left with Robbie, so she too begins looking around the outside of the house alone. Emily stays in the house with Lola in hopes that the twins will return out of fear. Robbie sets out on his own finding mission, and the chapter ends on the note that his decision to do so would be something that transforms his life.

Analysis:

There is a strong use of dramatic irony in all of Part One that is verbalized at the dinner table. Leon's mentioning of all the hot weather represents the heated passions of summertime youth. Even Emily gets in on the action, stating how "hot weather encourages loose morals among young people." It is also the weather that Leon thinks will lead to each and everyone's deviant behavior. Leon teases Briony for abandoning her play and notes that they all could "be in the library watching the theatrics right now." Briony was just literally in the library watching some theatrics of her own. The heroine goes from a child's play with children players to directing real-life occurrences with adult players. Leon's lack of awareness is another comment to the greater crime in Europe--the businessman from London blind to the realities of the adult world. He doesn't even recognize the assaults being put on to his younger cousin Lola by his good pal Paul. Nor does any adult at the table for that matter, even when the bruises are alluded to and it is noticed that Paul has a self-defense wound on his face. During the part of the narrative when we hear from Robbie's thoughts, he falsely assumes Briony is too young to understand, and that nothing will come of the incident in the library. Reminding us once again of the tragic flaw of Malvolio, the character Robbie once played on stage, he is oblivious to the unavoidable malice of a misdirected imagination. Here too, we read as Robbie relates his situation to English literary history--first Shakespeare and then D.H. Lawrence. Hate runs in a two-way direction. Cecilia, who is eager to love, is as eager to hate, and when she realizes Briony has ruined her moment with Robbie, she discovers "she had never hated anyone until now." The reader has to keep in mind, when analyzing this text after reading the entire novel, that these are actually Briony's interpretation of the events, at the age of 77. There is no way to be certain what Cecilia experienced or felt at that moment. 64 years after the fact, and Briony, as "writer," still has the power to control her sister's life and emotions. It is a power she has never been able to control or come to terms with.

Part One: Chapter Twelve

Summary:

This chapter is seen through the eyes of Emily Tallis as she returns to the study and debates calling the police. Alas, she decides against it. While alone in the house, Emily contemplates her sister, Hermione, and all of her selfish, attention-seeking needs. She recognizes this in Lola, as she attempts to console her while her twin brothers are sought. At one point noting the scratch on her face and bruises on her arms being “rather shocking” (137). Eventually, Lola leaves the house as well to look for her brothers and Emily ponders her husband Jack and we learn a little more about his business with the ministry. In a memory episode, Emily once peaked through some of Jack’s files while he was asleep in the den. The file had indications that Jack was part of a board that was preparing for war. Jack calls the house and they chat briefly. Emily tells Jack about the twins missing which he off puts as simple boy mischievousness and deviance. While on the phone with Jack, the troupe returns without the twins. They all stand shocked and Leon takes the phone from his mother, imploring his father to come home immediately. At one point Leon whispers into the receiver beneath a cupped hand and Emily does not know what he is saying, but the message is clearly understood. The news of the twins is not good. After Leon hangs up the phone, he suggests they all move to the drawing room where they can be seated before any news was broken to Emily or Lola.

Analysis:

The entire novel is about Briony coming to terms with a crime. However, it was not only she who committed a crime. Emily Tallis notes being aware of Lola's bruises, the scratch on Paul Marshall's face and that they were "rather shocking, given that it was inflicted by little boys," but still does nothing. This could be a metaphor for Britain's political stance on Germany's sweep through Europe in the late 1930s, standing by and doing nothing before it was too late.Emily's pondering of her younger sister's situation to abandon her children, disrespect the institution of marriage, and run off to Europe with a lover is also a comment on the changing traditions of feminism and women's rights to pursue their own lives that was about to hit the Western world. Briony, as narrator,

appears to finally recognize her mother's lack of involvement besides the trauma of the evening: "How like her, to sit in a room like this, not 'joining in.'" Briony seems to become aware of her mother's failure as protector during this fragile time of lost innocence. Even when Jack telephones the home to apologize for missing dinner, Emily refuses to acknowledge the situation Europe is in just like she refuses to take part in the family affairs that are happening all around her.

Part One: Chapter Thirteen

Summary:

Opening sentence informs the reader that this is the chapter when Briony “will commit her crime.” We are back a little bit in time, to the search party moments earlier, and Briony is searching for the twins on her own. Happy that Cecilia is under the protection of Leon, Briony heads in the opposite direction of Robbie, the “maniac,” and towards the lake. Before Briony leaves the lot nearest the house, she voyeuristically observes her mother in the window. She contemplates entering the drawing room and waiting with her mother, cuddled and secured, for the rest of the crew to return with the twins. Determined, however, that she is no longer a child, she abandons these infantile desires and continues with her search for the twins. Following a hunch that the twins may be in the temple in the lake, Briony makes her way towards the island. As she nears, she thinks she spots a bush or tree in the temple that she is unfamiliar with. As she closes in, the bush splits into two and it is then that she realizes it wasn’t a bust at all, but two people. Lola calls out, unsure, for Briony. At this moment, a larger figure dashes from the scene, leaving the terrified Lola rocking in fear and shock on the floor of the temple. Without clearly saying it, Lola was in the process of being raped. Briony approaches her older cousin and immediately does her best to comfort her. It is at this point that Briony begins to unravel her “crime.” At first, Briony repeatedly asks her cousin: “Was it him?” But Lola never answers. After repeated attempts to have her cousin identify her assailant, Briony realizes Lola doesn’t know who it was, creating an opening for her to plant the notion that it had to be “the maniac.” Lola herself continues to be unsure, but does not act with any sort of defiance or authority over Briony's accusations. She explains to Briony that she never did see the man that was raping her. She was attacked from behind and her eyes were covered during the assault. Briony ignores this doubt, inferring it had to be Robbie. She tells Lola about the scene she witnessed in the library between Robbie and Cecilia, further supporting her claim. Briony is now determined that the rapist must be Robbie. She comforts Lola to the best that she can, who is still contending the doubt in Briony’s claims. The two eventually leave the temple and make their way back to the house. Before they can ascend the embankment (Lola cries she is too weak), Leon and Cecilia appear on the bridge. Leon carries Lola without asking questions; Cecilia remains silent, attempting maternal care that goes ignored. As they walk to the house, Briony expels the tale she is now “certain” of exactly what happened.

Analysis:

Briony's interpretation of Cecilia and Robbie's love leads her to believe she must "protect her sister." This is an inversion to the way that Cecilia used to protect Briony after nightmares, and instead of protecting her by imploring "come back," the failed attempt causes her to go away. The crime she is about to commit is smothered in good intentions, however misguided they may be.

Again, we have the theme of misunderstanding or misinterpreting a sensory experience. What Briony "sees" by the lake isn't enough to overcome what she "imagines" to be true. This visual confusion in the dark (literally and figuratively) contributes to Briony's false accusation of Robbie, proving she trusts her literary instincts more than visual data. Briony's crime then, is not that she blatantly lies, but that she confuses fact for fiction through her talent for artistic creation. On page 150, it is noted that Briony's childhood ended "in the dark." What began as a scene in a well-lit nursery, ends with a scene in a darkened wilderness. McEwan is making obvious references to literary allusion here, specifically to William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience--the lamb and the tyger. Briony is now a participant in real life, in the wild, by a lake, instead of a player in a childhood fairytale in a nursery.

The rape happens near a temple "on an artificial island in an artificial lake." Even the surroundings are made up, but still 200 years old. Just like the art of writing and story-telling, what is perceived as natural and ancient, can be one without necessarily being the other. Briony is not the only one to commit a crime here. Lola's silence when she very well knows Briony is making up her "knowing" of what she saw is just as indicting. As well, when the authorities arrive and the adults are involved, everyone relies on the testimony of one thirteen-year-old girl. The adults ignorance in such matters and failure to pursue proper truth can warrant just as much blame for Robbie's false arrest, if not more. Finally, Robbie is described as the true hero, coming down the embankment towards the house with the two twins at his side. This is a foreshadowing and further representation of the idea that the Quincey boys are interchangeable with Corporals Nettles and Mace. Here we have Robbie leading them from the wilderness back to the home front in safety. Robbie as "hero" to the narrator's eyes stretches beyond that fateful night in 1935 and into the

war. It is Nettles in the end who shares Robbie's letters with Briony so she can accurately write the war section of the book, and it is Pierrot in the end who finally organized the "Trials of Arabella" to be played out in full.

Part One: Chapter Fourteen Summary:

This is the final chapter in part one. In short, it is the interview and statements of what Briony claims she saw in the temple.Briony, Leon, Cecilia, and Lola enter the home. Betty and Emily take Lola upstairs to clean her up and try and get her to

sleep, awaiting the Doctor to arrive. Two police inspectors arrive and soon after, the lead Detective. Paul Marshall enters shortly after everyone else. He learns of the news from the inspectors. Paul appears nervous and anxious at first arrival, but then calms after speaking to the inspectors. Cecilia remains silent on the edges of the scene, and furious at the same time. Leon is doing his best to act objectively and paternal. Briony then gets an idea. She runs from the silent, tensioned drawing room and upstairs to Cecilia’s room. She searches through her older sister's things and finds the letter. She returns to the room with the letter and is about to hand it to Leon, when, at the last minute, she changes her mind and hands it to the lead Detective. He reads the letter, passes it off to this two junior officers, and then to Leon. Emily Tallis then notices that the letter is more than just an arbitrary note. She demands to read it, and when she does, Cecilia becomes aware of the object. Furious, she verbally slams the entire room.

Briony then goes on to explain to the Detectives and her mother and brother all that she has witnessed over the last two days. Although no direct reference is made to her expelling of the incident at the fountain, she does tell of the letter, her reading it, and the scene she discovered in the library between Robbie and Cecilia prior to dinner. Upon the “official interview,” the lead Detective repeatedly asks Briony if she is certain she saw him (meaning Robbie Turner) (169), to which she confirms she did. She also shows the detectives and Emily the exact spot of the library “attack.” As the household waits anxiously for something to happen, the night ends and dawn begins to rise. Breakfast is prepared when they notice a figure approaching in the rising sun of the lengthy driveway. The entire party goes out to see who/what it is. At first, it appears to be a giant, unsure of its character; there is hesitation and fear. As it moves closer, it is realized that it is in fact Robbie with the twins—one on his shoulder the other trailing in his hand. There is relief that the twins are all right, but that immediately moves to hatred and fear in Robbie’s presence. Her mother sends Briony to her room. Briony watches from her bedroom window as minutes (hours?) later Robbie is led from the home and into the police car in handcuffs. She witnesses her sister, Cecilia, run from the house and console Robbie, whispering to him in what is an assumed forgiveness and loyal state of shock. As the police car is pulling down the laneway, Grace Turner is approaching on foot. She stops the car and strikes the policemen and their vehicle with an umbrella. She screams “Liars!” repeatedly to the car and the Tallis household as the car pulls away.

Analysis:

The importance of being the only witness to the crime and the one whom all eyes fall upon to identify the assailant feeds Briony's narcissism and confirms her lie in her own head:"Her vital role fueled her certainty." Like the art of storytelling itself, the more she repeats the words, the more it becomes true in her head. It is actual written text that confirms Briony's story and seals Robbie's fate. Aware her accusations are not being taken seriously, Briony is able to support them with the written word. The combination of her imagination and erotic letter-writing have the power to turn imagination into reality, but this time, not only to Briony but to her entire audience as well. By now, Briony changes her phrasing from the sensory "I saw him" to the factual and cognitive: "I know it was him." By the time she sees Robbie's innocence laid out in front of her, she is "outraged," a sign that she is fully convinced of his guilt. After being "sent to bed" by her mother, Briony feels "helpless and childish" in her success. She is unable to identify all that she is achieved and is left confused and desires her mother's protection. Witnessing Cecilia's forgiveness of Robbie in front of the police car, Briony enters a new dimension of adulthood--guilt. Forgiveness is a word that had "never meant a thing before," and now she will spend the rest of her life in search of it. Part One ends with the tragedy of the night invoking a love for her sister and an assumption that the events of the evening will forever bring them closer. This is hardly the case. For the rest of the book, Briony is a detached, isolated, and lonely--but brilliant--writer. Her crime was the moment she chose the latter over familial love and social complacency. McEwan's draws the attention to the sacrifices one makes for a contribution to literary tradition. It is almost as if Briony was old enough to understand that committing her crime against Robbie would cause her a lifelong imprisonment of guilt and eternal pursuit for atonement. But it was a decision she consciously made, in order to become the writer she had always hoped to be.

Part Two: Pages 179-201

Summary:

Part two starts off with Robbie Turner navigating two privates through the countryside of World War II France. We discover that Turner has been injured, and has shrapnel in his side. We are unclear of the exact year, but England is on the retreat back towards the North and France has been occupied by Germany completely, so it is safe to assume it is pre-1942. The three British soldiers, Robbie Turner and Corporals Mace and Nettle, take refuge in the barn of an old French women somewhere near Arras. They are en route to Dunkirk where they can catch a Naval ship back to England. The French woman's two sons return to the farm after a family-seeking mission for victims of the war and share dinner and wine with the British soldiers. When Turner attempts to sleep, his thoughts turn to nightmares of the awful scenes of war and his memories of prison. We learn that Turner spent three and a half years in a British prison for his crimes against Lola. We also learn that during that time, Cecilia remained supportive of his innocence, abandoning all the members of her family completely. She is now a nurse and living in London. Only six days out of prison, Turner was recruited to the army (the war had yet to begin). He begins training immediately, further delaying the time he gets to see Cecilia. He is able to meet with her once at a café in London, but the rendezvous is dissatisfying. It is fair for the reader to assume that Robbie has made an arrangement to reduce his prison time by serving in the British Army in the war agains the Germans.

The two plan to spend two weeks together before Turner has to report to the Army. But before this can happen, England declares war on Germany and their opportunity is missed. Through the retelling of letters, the reader learns of Turner’s encouragement for Cecilia to reach out to her family, if even to let them know where she is. Despite his efforts, Cecilia refuses to do so, disgusted with the way the accused him of rape and saw that an innocent man be put in prison based on the shaky testimony of a 13 year old girl. In a final letter from Cecilia to Robbie, it is revealed that Briony has passed on her opportunities at Cambridge to take up nursing as well. Briony is seeking a meeting with Cecilia in which Cecilia interprets to be an attempt to come clean about her false statements on that fateful night. Unsure of what she should do, Cecilia seeks Robbie's opinions through a letter to him.

Analysis:

The change in time and setting represents a change in literary form for McEwan. The first part was written under the heat of an England summer, was Romantic in style (plenty of references to nature, water, vegetation) and now we are entering the second part which will be a war-memoir. The move from a country-home traditional novel style to historical fiction demonstrates Atonement's sweep through the history of English literature. Writing in only one form would not be enough for Briony Tallis, she needs to exercise her brilliance by different means. Right away we are given a "leg in a tree." This disembodiment of human body parts foreshadows the horrors of war to be described on the next one hundred pages. The leg Robbie spots in the tree takes him back to that night in 1935. Recall that when Briony went to look for the twins, she noticed her mother's leg in the window and, it too, appeared "disembodied." Also, one of the twins is missing a piece of their ear. There is a literary motif at play here, and McEwan is pointing out just how simply parts of oneself can be torn or dismembered. The only privacy Robbie gets while on his Odyssey back to Dunkirk is through a map, suggesting that there is only direction in his life where no other people are involved. It is the rest of humanity, and not Robbie himself, who have destroyed his path home for him (Briony, Lola, the war). The Frenchman comments on how the war is repeating itself after WWI pointing to the cycles of guilt and forgiveness in humankind. The narrator introduces the idea of "hope" during Robbie's march. Her atonement is building. In Part One she admits guilt; now she employs hope. On page 192, Briony relates Robbie and Cecilia to so many other famous romantic couples who have overcome great odds for their love. Neither Robbie as character in her story, nor Briony as narrator, are willing to let go of their dependence on literature (notice it was in a library where Briony observes Robbie and Cecilia consummating their love). This entire section is unlike the rest in that its optimistic. Robbie is determined, like Leon's attitude, that all will turn out for the best. He will make it to Dunkirk alive and back to London. Surprisingly, this happens.

Part Two: Pages 201-250

Summary:

The three soldiers awake at dawn and leave the French farm. They march north towards Dunkirk and come across an exodus of villagers with some other regimented British soldiers. Turner loses his cool trying to steal a vehicle from one of the villagers. Corporal

Mace stops him from doing so. The men are then approached by a Scottish Major and ordered to join a team that is going to launch an offensive on some German artillery near the town. Before they can leave on their special mission, Turner notices a German fighter plane approaching the convoy of soldiers and villagers. Before anybody else is able to notice or respond, Turner yells, runs, and seeks shelter beneath a turned over lorry along with Mace and Nettle. Machine gun fire sweeps over the road, injuring many and killing a small boy. Turner, Mace, and Nettle avoid injury. They bury the fifteen-year-old boy before moving on.

After the aerial assault, Turner denies the Major’s orders to sneak-attach the German machine gun location. Surprisingly the Major accepts this refusal. As the men continue their march towards Dunkirk, Turner postulates the lost relationship between himself and the Tallis’s (save Cecilia). His mind then focuses on his relationship with Briony and struggles with the notion of whether or not he will ever be able to forgive her. Turner then recalls a summer day in 1932, three years before the fatal night of Lola’s rape. He remembers teaching Briony how to swim in the lake at the Tallis park (at the time, she was ten and he was nineteen). Briony fakes a drowning to test Robbie to save her, which he does. When he questions and scolds her for her actions, she replies that she loves him. Turner begins to piece his thoughts together. Regardless of the fact that after the day in the lake, Briony did nothing else to demonstrate her “love” for Robbie (which he rights off as a silly school girl crush), he realizes her vindictiveness towards him was a result of assumed betrayal. Briony loved Robbie and he fell in love with her older sister. Briony’s love transformed to “disappointment, then despair, and eventual bitterness” (220), which explains her motives for carrying on with her accusations and statements against him all the way through the courts. The men and the other Belgian villagers continue their march towards Dunkirk. The German bombers continue heavy with their attack. Turner attempts to rescue a boy and his mother who is unable to flea for proper cover as the bomber nears. At first, he is successful, throwing the two of them to the ground and protecting them with his body. Next, as they run through a field for wooded shelter, the mother and child refuse to go and there is little Turner can do. Another bomb hits, Turner is thrown to the ground, and the mother and child are completely obliterated.

Turner eventually makes it to the forest where he is reunited with Nettle and Mace. The three, along with a few hundred other survivors from the attack, wait until the assault is over, and continue with their march towards Dunkirk. As he marches, Turner postulates his fatherless life, his relationship with Jack Tallis, and the necessity that he, himself, become a father. As the convoy reaches the edges of the town, a bridge leading into the town is being prepared for defense from an inevitable German ground attack. Knowing that the commanding officers of the defense squad will summon Turner as he enters through the gates, Mace and Nettle implore him to fake a leg injury to avoid being selected as one of the defending soldiers. The plan works and Mace and Nettle carry Turner into the town. Eventually the three soldiers reach Dunkirk, the English Channel. When they arrive, they notice hundreds of soldiers and civilians on the beach awaiting the British Navy for rescue before the German armies arrive. There are no signs of a naval fleet anywhere. The men join other soldiers in looting through the town looking for alcohol, food, and a place to sleep. The town is in a state of general chaos. In one bar, there is a mob of soldiers surrounding and threatening an RAF officer with his life for the lack of support from the British Airforce. Turner debates getting involved, but doesn’t. As it nears the point of a mob-led murder on their fellow countryman, Mace appears out of nowhere and says he is going to drown the man. He picks him up and runs out of the saloon towards the water. In the mayhem, he is lost and separated and it is at that point Nettle and Turner are aware Mace just saved the poor man’s life. Separated from Mace, Turner and Nettle search the town for food and shelter. They come across a “gypsy” woman who will allow them some food if they rescue her pig that has escaped its sty. Nettle thinks it is absurd, but Turner feels differently and forces the two to do the very act. The reward is some wine, bread, sausage, and sugared almonds as well as some cleaning up. The two men pass a hotel that is being rummaged for sleeping gear. They witness another mobbing where one soldier breaks his back and no one else stops to help him. They hear the battle going on at the edge of town (that Robbie luckily avoided) and know that soon the defense line will break and the Germans will be amongst them. Shortly thereafter, at the insistence of Nettle, Turner and Nettle find a cellar in and old home to sleep in. There are already some soldiers there, but they manage to find room enough to sleep. Turner drifts into nightmares where his mind battles with guilt for not doing more to save those people along his walk to Dunkirk. He also debates whether Briony will come through on her word to vindicate him. Nettle is forced to wake Turner from his screaming nightmares. He notices how ill Turner appears and implores him to “hang in" (249) because he saw a British Naval fleet coming through the channel and heard they are being marched down to the water the next morning. The reader can imply that Turner’s shrapnel wound may be the cause of gangrene, hence his disillusionment. Turner drifts back off to sleep and recalls Cecilia’s words for him the day he was arrested at the Tallis household. They are the same words that end all of her letters to him at war: “I’ll wait for you. Come back.” (250) Turner promises Nettle he will say no more in his sleep and to wake him when they are ready to march to the boats.

Analysis:

Just like the lost twins in the forest that night in England, Nettles and Mace recognize Robbie as "their lucky ticket." In a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern way, Mace and Nettle help push the story along and are the only way into any historical accuracy for the story (it is revealed later that it is Nettles with whom Briony communicated to get this part of her tale correct). When Robbie daydreams while marching about coming home to Cecilia and the "prospect of a rebirth" he compares it to that night when he walked along the Tallis lawn, "in his best suit, swaggering on the promise of life."

Even as Robbie walks, he walks in a literary, rhythmic beat (page 206). No matter where Robbie goes, he is unable to escape Briony's unrelenting metaphor to literature. The flashback to the scene where Robbie is teaching Briony to swim is quite obvious in terms of analysis. Again, we have water; and again, it is an object that deceives Robbie (Briony was fake-drowning) and leads to Briony's rampant imagination (being in love at age 11 with an older servant boy). In the end, neither of them 'benefit' from this lake experience. When Robbie and the men arrive at Dunkirk, the scene is total chaos. Robbie has time to consider all of what English civilization has to offer him. He has experienced mass bombing and wartime (WWII), knows rapacious businessmen (Paul Marshall), seen its repression of women (his mother, Cecilia, and Emily Tallis), and lived first class though an archaic and enslaved feudal system. Dunkirk symbolizes everything that is wrong in this world: "A dead civilization. First his own life ruined, then everybody else's." Like the vase that was broken at the beginning of the novel, ancient relics that survived WWI were cracked at first, but have now been totally shattered.

Part Three: Pages 250-270

Summary:

The beginning of Part Three has Briony learning the ropes as a nurse in one of London’s hospitals while it prepares for the returning of wounded soldiers. We learn that after a stint as an unsuccessful short story writer, Briony took up nursing where she befriends fellow nurse Fiona and fears Sister Marjorie Drummond who rules her nursing academy with an iron fist. The opening pages describe the conditions of the health care industry in the late 30s. Young women being homesick for their parents or their men who were overseas, attempting to learn a trade which was rather new, and fulfilling their duty in this wretched war. One article to note is how the name badge Briony is given to wear sports the wrong first initial, having the letter “N” where a “B” should be. Briony compares the nursing experience with “her student life” (260), recognizing all of the opportunities passed by choosing nursing over Cambridge. This has been a decision her parent’s were not fond of and are certain their daughter will come to her senses about soon. Briony has detached herself from her family almost entirely. After living with an aunt and uncle in a part of London and trying it as a writer, she now limits her communications with her parents to monthly letters in which very little is revealed. Her parents are still living in the country. They have taken in some billets from East London as part of Britain’s safety procedure to evacuate the city (because of the bombings) and things at the Tallis household are in complete disarray. Betty dislikes all the mothers boarding there (there are three of them) and the children (there are seven of them). There is constant fighting amongst all inhabitants at the Tallis estate and the park/yard is being destroyed in preparation for war. All of the valuable belongings have been moved to the basement in case of a bombing, and Betty drops Uncle Clem’s vase on the steps, smashing it completely (262). It is also told that Danny Hardman has joined the navy.

Briony keeps a journal to maintain her sanity (265-66), citing that writing is the only thing where her true identity is revealed. She admits to reading the papers each day and learns that the British Army is retreating out of France. Germany has reached the channel. She finally understands the urgency of the hospital’s preparations to clear space. Briony receives a letter from her father. In it, he informs her that Lola and Paul Marshall are to be married. He underscores the letter with “love as always” (268). Briony reads into this as her father's omniscient awareness into the fact that he may know that Paul was the criminal, and exactly what Briony and Lola did to blame Robbie. Once again, guilt overcomes Briony. She feels she is the one person who “made this possible” (268). There are hints to the reader that the rapist that night was Paul Marshall, and Briony has known it all along. She now wonders if her father does too. Briony attempts to contact her father over the telephone while on a lunch break, but the line never gets through and she runs back to the hospital, late, but in a “surprising physical pleasure, a brief taste of freedom” (270).

Analysis:

In Part Three, we experience another shift in literary style. Here we have a home-front story of reconciliation. The focus in on Briony herself, her acceptance of guilt and her attempt at atonement. As opposed to Robbie who is out in France journeying towards home in a Odysseyian format, we have Briony who is already at home and journeying as close to the war as she can get by her decision to become a nurse. Robbie wants to escape the war and clear his name, ridding himself of shame. Briony wants to get as close to the war as she can, announce her sin to the world, and get rid of her guilt, even if it means living in shame. This is really a chapter in "the stripping away of identity" for Briony. Nursing has caused her to be without her class and even without her name (the wrong initial has been given to her badge). All the determination of a young Briony Tallis has been stripped. As a working-class nurse, Briony has "abandoned herself," she has "no will and no freedom" and is sustained to a life of "strictures, rules, obedience and housework" which is quite different than the Briony we knew at age 13. But "behind the name badge and uniform was her true self"--a writer who still derived "pleasure in seeing pages covered in her own handwriting." The ward is described as like "darkness itself" and there is no Cecilia there to protect her. Briony needs to escape, at night and into the dark, in order to write--the only act that "reserves her dignity." She is still literature-minded, thinking of herself as a "kind of medical Chaucer." Briony is conscious of her efforts as nurse were to somehow make up for what she did to Robbie. But just like the physical wounds she is meant to treat on a daily basis, she can never undo the damage. Regardless of how well she can help it heal, the scar of what will always be unforgiven will never heal.

Part Three: Pages 270-297

Summary:

Briony and Fiona go to the park for lunch. They enjoy their time away from the hospital and share laughs, getting to know more about one another. On their walk back to the hospital, they come on the horrifying scene they had been anticipating, dreading, and hoping would never come. Hundreds of wounded soldiers back from France are spread out all over the hospital lawn and steps.

Briony attempts to carry a wounded soldier into the operating room and almost drops him. Immediately, she feels she will fail. She feels humiliation, shock, and shame. Despite these moments of self pity, Briony tries to fulfill her role as a nurse, the one she has trained for, but the scene is too chaotic for her. At one point, she leads a battalion of wounded soldiers to a vacant ward and tries to follow the procedures she has been taught. She has no control over the men, and panics. A superior nurse then assures her that “procedure” can be let go. No one was prepared for this. Briony spends majority of the chapter passing on from one soldier to the next. Removing bandages, cleaning and recovering wounds, helping soldiers to drink, cleaning bedpans. Some soldiers are worse than others, and a lot of the narrative in this section is extremely graphic about the horrors of war. She has to remove shrapnel from one man, sees another man whose face is completely gone, and talks to another man as he dies from missing part of his cranium and brain. Briony learns a lot about herself and humankind during these hours. She sees men and bodies as they are—material objects. And she realizes that all the nursing in the world would not make up for what she has done to her sister and Robbie Turner. It makes her feel even less like a person (293). The last four pages of the section are a lengthy and detailed rejection letter from the magazine/journal where she sent in her story “Two Figures by a Fountain.” The letter is encouraging, and tells Briony to pursue her story and her craft more, and that they would like to see the story reworked and resubmitted as something more than in short-story form.

Analysis:

When Briony does her best to handle the situation of the hundreds of wounded men who arrive at her hospital, she is determined not to fail. Instead, she comes away humiliated. As soon as the war touches her life, i.e. is not in control of the situation like a writer always is, she fails. Her failure as a nurse during those first days represents her inability to cope with a world in which she is not the puppeteer. The men whom Briony attempts to lead to beds do not even "seem to be aware of her existence" confirming her subconscious fears of complete anonymity and lack of identity. Order has been restored and Briony is invisible. Compare the chaos of war and the hospital to the order of Briony's farm animals in her room as a child, or the direction she commanded when rehearsing the play in the nursery. In the real world, especially during the war, Briony seems to not exist. In her imaginative world, Briony is God. In the presence of men, Briony is once again protected from the obscene. Just like the "c" word that was placed into the letter she read when she was 13, the "f" word is used her out of pain, and the soldier who uses it is scolded by Sister Drummond. This is odd behavior for a woman who's entire profession is based on words. Water is an important part of these thirty pages. It is water that is desired and required by all the wounded bodies, and it is Briony who is meant to deliver it. She compares herself to a mother, feeding the men "like giant babies." During the horrifying scenes of torture and pain,

Briony realizes the body to be a material object, and once torn apart, it is difficult, even impossible, to mend. Identity appears again, this time in the form of a conscious decision by Briony to share her name with a dying man. She knows this is against the rules, but takes comfort in living out his delusional fantasy. The last pages of this section end with a long, detailed letter from C.C. (Cyril Connolly, editor of Horizon Literary Journal in London at the time). C.C positions the letter to ask what the English novel of the twentieth century has inherited, and what can it do now? The letter has a profound effect on Briony: On the one hand it encourages to pursue her story further. On the other, it coaches her in all she is getting wrong in writing, including being too impersonating. C.C. encourages her to find her own voice and be less concerned with the traditions of Virginia Woolf. Most importantly, Briony is told to look beyond her own situation as the observer and recorder of events and spend more time answering how her crime "might affect the lives of the two adults." Two final pieces of insight and advice are offered to Briony that need little analysis but are worth noting: 1) Artists are politically impotent. 2) Warfare is the enemy of creative activity.

Part Three: Pages 297-330

Summary:

Briony, like the rest of London, is aware of the advancement and edge Germany is taking in the war. The soldiers were pushed back over the channel and the buzz bombings of London are about to begin. The city is preparing for a full-blown German invasion.

Briony continues with her long shifts at the hospital and dealing with the traumas and horrors of war. On one Saturday, Briony trades a shift with Fiona and begins to walk north through London into the countryside. During her walk, the reader is provided with a narrative description of her own thoughts into the guilt she carries and her surrender to the fact that she will never receive (nor deserve) complete forgiveness from Cecilia or Robbie Turner. The destination of her Saturday journey is the church where Lola and Paul Marshall are being married. There is a Rolls Royce outside the chapel proving Paul’s financial success as a result of the war, and the ceremony inside is very private and small. Briony sneaks into the back of the chapel and observes the wedding. Once the preacher offers up to the congregation to speak aloud if there is any reason why Lola and Paul Marshall should not be married, Briony freezes and does nothing. The two complete the ceremony and exit the church. Briony goes unnoticed by all, accept the twins, Jackson and Pierrot, who spot her as they parade out of the church. Lola “may” have recognized her, but the reader is left guessing (308). Briony then visits a one-bedroom apartment near the church. It is where her sister, Cecilia, is living. Cecilia is not expecting Briony and is shocked to see her. They originally talk of nursing and the war, and Cecilia is very cold towards her younger sister. As they talk, Robbie appears in the kitchen, unaware of Briony’s presence. When he sees her, he too is shocked and angry. He goes at her both verbally and physically, and once again, Cecilia steps in between and “saves” her little sister from Robbie’s wrath. Briony is happy to see that Robbie is alive. Briony tries to apologize but does not expect forgiveness from either Cecilia or Robbie. She insists that she has “grown up” (323) but Robbie is not buying it, and still threatens her. Robbie then instructs Briony on exactly what she needs to do if she is serious and sincere about her search for “atonement.” Robbie tells Briony to go to her parents and let them know that she knowingly falsely accused Robbie of raping Lola. Then she will write Robbie a letter in “great detail” about everything that led up to what she saw at the lake and why she blamed Robbie. Finally, she will go to the magistrate with the same, true version of events that night as she remembers them. This is when Briony realizes Robbie and Lola think Danny Hardman was the guilty party, when in fact it was Paul Marshall. She also tells them about the marriage. Robbie and Cecilia escort Briony to the subway station. She apologizes again for all that she has done, and then turns to leave. The apology is received blankly. Robbie just beseeches her to do as he has instructed. This is the last time Briony sees either of them.

Analysis:

It is learned that the war is not going well for the Allied Forces, and just like Briony in her search for atonement, "the country stands alone now" too. Through the course of the novel, it should be realized that both England and Briony go through the stages of losing innocence to a greater, evil force they do not understand, fighting to maintain preservation of that innocence, submitting to the guilt of their failures, and eventually surviving the worst of the transition, achieving some sort of forgiveness on the other side. When speaking to the soldiers, Briony learns it was the "fucking RAF" that had let them down. The omnipresent power from the sky is what failed to be there in their time of need. This could be a metaphor for the Godlessness in both Briony's and Robbie's lives in terms of lack of protection from harm. Religion pops up again when Briony enters the church where Lord and Lady Marshall are being married--she expects "the scene of a crime" (recall, the rape took place near the temple on the Tallis estate) and is disappointed when her imagination has led her to false expectations. Even the bride does not "appear to be a victim" like she had hoped for, and this time, the temple offers some sort of serenity instead of threat to Lola. What Briony needs, in her own words, is "backbone."

She seeks this courage in real life and not just writing, but is unable to find it. She misses her opportunity to annul the marriage because of a "lacking courage for confrontation." The feeds into the idea of the writer as complete narcissist. Briony understands that what may not transpire in real life, can always be recreated in fiction. "It was not the backbone of a story she lacked. It was backbone." Everything to Briony seems a "far-off, distant time." Her lunch with Fiona a few weeks ago feels that way, let alone that fateful night in 1935. Even the heat-wave from that summer is remembered to be from a different time altogether, which is McEwan's way of playing with the folklore and human condition to remember things as always being "...-er" in the past (hotter, better, darker, lovelier, simpler, etc.). Briony's stroll through the north of London in search for, first, Lola's wedding, and second, her sister, is framed as back to the timelessness and permanence of the novel's very beginning. She is leaving the modern, war-torn city and walking back into the rustic, rural English countryside. Her only direction is a "crumbling bus route map dated 1926," emphasizing this point. On page 309, she even says: "It seemed a far-off, innocent time." The closer she gets to her sister, the more her identity is washed. "Since she left the cafe," Briony takes on a "ghostly persona" and the way her sister speaks to her is unidentifiable. Cecilia's identity has disappeared too: "She barely knew this woman." Cecilia's loyalty lies completely and solely to Robbie now. This is made obvious when he moves in to attack Briony and once again, Briony is saved by Cecilia who intervenes. The words "come back," however, are directed at Robbie and not Briony, further isolating Briony from her sister and realizing she never will, nor should be, forgiven. There is a subtle redirection onto the susceptibility of error and blame in this section to. As long as Briony had blamed Robbie for the rape, Robbie and Cecilia have assumed it was Danny Hardman who was the assailant. Ironically, it is Briony who is able to swing what they have imagined into the reality. "Years of seeing it a certain way" does not only apply to the guilty (Briony) but also to the innocent (Robbie and Cecilia). At the end of this section, the narrator, still using the third person, notes that "she is ready to begin" her atonement. She then signs the novel, "BT," leaving the reader to assume it was Briony who wrote the story, but not fully ready to commit to her identity completely.

Part Four: London, 1999

Summary:

We pick up Briony in 1999 on her 77th Birthday as she is about to make her “last visit” to the Imperial War Museum library in Lambeth. We learn Briony has received “dozens of letters” from Colonel Nettle to help her tell her story, of which he will donate to the library. Briony informs the reader of a recent diagnosis of vascular dementia. In short, she is losing her mind (similar to Alzheimer) and acknowledges that soon she will not recognize, nor remember any parts of her life. She is strangely comfortable with this news. As her driver takes her from her apartment to the library, Briony runs through a shopping list of what most of the characters in her life have done and gone on to become. Notably, Leon was married four times and is still alive, “heroically nursing his wife” and raising boisterous children alone, and Lord and Lady (Paul and Lola) Marshall have been extremely financially successful and well respected British citizens. In fact, when Briony gets to the museum, she is surprised to see Lord and Lady Marshall coming down the large steps towards their car. They are concealed and protected by servicemen, and Briony avoids seeing them and being seen. She comments on how old Paul has become and how vibrant Lola still is, despite her age of 80 years. Briony confesses to the reader that Lola will “certainly outlive me” (338). Following her visit to the museum and thanking all the workers their for her help, she returns to her flat. It is there that we learn she was married to a man named Thierry, who died fifteen years prior. Briony then gets in another car with a young Ph.D. student driver and heads to Tilney Hotel (342) for the first time since Emily’s funeral. The Tallis household and park had been turned into a golf course and hotel. The lake is gone. Briony’s suitcase is taken to Auntie Venus’s room as she explores the main floor of the now hotel, stopping outside the door to her old room. Pierrot’s grandson Charles is the one who has organized the event. A little later, Briony enters the old library that is now a reception room to the applause of over 50 relatives, whom most she does not recognize. Leon is there and mostly incoherent in a wheelchair. Pierrot is there also, but we learn Jackson died fifteen years ago. It is revealed that Briony is a well-accomplished writer and that her books are being studied in high schools across England (345). She is then seated for a special performance, and she is unaware of what it will be. A group of the younger relatives (mostly Quinceys) appear on a mock-stage and begin a performance of "The Tales of Arabella." Briony is shocked, pleased, and in a state of bewilderment, wondering where, whomever it was, found a copy of her very first play. She looks at Pierrot who is crying in happiness and can only assume he has something to do with it. When the play ends, the crowd “rises in uproar.” Briony is the only one who notices Pierrot, seated in the corner, “completely overcome” (348). Briony ponders what is on his mind and whether he is completely reliving that summer when he was just a child and his parents left him for their own selfish reasons. Briony apologizes to Pierrot and takes blame for not letting the play happen back in 1935. The party ends and we jump forward to Briony sitting at her writing desk at five in the morning. She explains how her last novel should have been her first, the one that has gone through many versions from January 1940 to March 1999. Her complete intention after the

second draft was to “set out to describe” the only one real crime of wartime Britain – Lola’s, Marshall’s, her own. Briony informs the reader of her intention to wait until all the characters are dead before publication so she can avoid the risk of being sued for libel for not changing names, something she refuses to do as part of her “atonement.” In her final address to the reader, Briony lets go of the last twist of her tale. She explains, “it is only in this last version that my lovers end well, standing side by side on a South London pavement as I walk away” (350). The long paragraph describes how the part of her book where she is in London in 1940, and meets Robbie and Cecilia in their flat, was completely made up. The narrator explains how Robbie never made it off the beach in Dunkirk and that Cecilia died shortly thereafter in a London bombing. Briony explains how after the wedding, the real story is that she was too cowardly to confront a bereaved sister, which led to never seeing her again before her death shortly thereafter. The letters between Robbie and Cecilia, the "two lovers," are now in the archives of the war museum and not her possession. Her explanation is that she did not think the reader would want to believe that they never met again, lived together again, and loved again. Briony finally explains that as long as her book is read, her version will be the one that will “survive to love” (350) rather than the sadness of “what really happened.” Briony makes a final plea to the reader: “How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all” (350-51). Briony's final act of atonement was to fictionally give her lovers happiness but never let them forgive her. She then debates if she should have gone further and brought Robbie and Cecilia, alive, happy and old in one another’s arms, to her 77th Birthday party, and states, “It’s not impossible.”

Analysis:

Finally, Briony clearly establishes herself as the author. This creates a massive shift in form--it went from a third person narrative to a first person voice in a Chinese-box (story within a story) styled text. Briony's "atonement" is achieved through the same agent her crime was caused in the first place: imagination, creativity, writing. On the one hand, the book exposes her crime, on the other, it uses 'make-believe' to atone her guilt. This admission puts into question how historically accurate any of this is. The artificial ending reverts Briony back to her thirteen-year-old self, a writer who is attracted to fairy-tales and order. Briony suffers from her an inflated sense of creative genius, going even as far as to refer to herself as "God." Even Briony herself, who is dying, can joy a happy ending in the form of a loving family reunion and successful performance of her very first play. The villains, the Marshalls, appear to be suffering shallow isolation and impotence regardless of their wealth. In whole, "Atonement" is a book about imagination and storytelling. It demonstrates the great risk of the writer and how dangerous fiction can be, especially when mistaken for history. In short, the book is an examination of the relationship between what is imagined and what is true. When the reader learns of the "many drafts" since 1940, he/she can help but ask him/herself: "Okay then, which is the real one?" The question left to the reader at the end, is who does Briony seek atonement from? Is it a reconciliation from her reader or an "at-one-ment" with herself?