Drew Lichty "Briony: To Hate Or Not To Hate, That Is The Question"

Drew Lichty

Mr. Breaton

ENG4U

May 25, 2015

Briony: To Hate Or Not To Hate, That Is The Question

Briony is easy to hate. Finding something good about her might prove difficult but it is not impossible. On the surface Briony is a noisy and entitled brat. However a deeper look into the character dispels these notions. McEwan deliberately paints Briony as a character that’s easy to hate in Part 1 of Atonement. However during Part 3, and “London, 1999” McEwan manages to create an aura of pity that surrounds the character. The reader begins to realize that Briony is not inherently despicable and that the qualities that makes one hate her are simply due to her lack of understanding as a child. McEwan is able to achieve this feeling of pity towards Briony by painting her in a way that makes the reader reconsider what we think of her and question our initial thoughts. McEwan achieves this by giving her very potent dose of self reflexivity and empathy.

The character Briony shows quite a bit of self reflexivity. Not only does she realize how wrong she was and how she affected Robbie and Cee’s life, but she also shows another layer of self reflection. Near the end of Part 3 Briony visits Cee and, (prior to her visit) unknowingly Robbie. She confesses about falsely accusing Robbie. Robbie and Cee, very understandably, do not give Briony any forgiveness. They ask her to officially retract her statement and write a letter explaining herself, but they do not forgive her.

“Robbie said softly, ‘Just do all the things we’ve asked.’ It was almost conciliatory, that ‘just,’ but not quite, not yet” (McEwan 329). In this scene Briony is not getting any relief of her guilt. Robbie does not say “It’s okay” or “I forgive you”. He clearly shows that he is still incredibly angry at Briony, anger that he and Cee cannot cast aside. Since this entire book, (past Part 1) is a construct of Briony’s imagination, she made the conscious decision to not let herself get any shred of forgiveness. This shows that Briony is reflecting on her own decisions and has come to the conclusion that she deserves to go to her grave by not being forgiven. She deserves to enter the afterlife with that burden weighing on her shoulders. This is her punishment, one, in her mind, that is well deserved. Since Briony as a character believes more strongly in her stories than real life, (because novels live on far past the life of a person) it’s not ridiculous to assume she eternally deserves to be guilty. For as long as her story remains on the shelves, Briony is guilty. This is why Briony was so adamant on waiting until Lola and Paul Marshall passed, so all the names could be preserved within the pages of her creation. So that her guilt could be preserved.

Briony becomes very empathetic towards the end of the book. This comes through in how she creates her story. Briony spends the majority of her life recreating drafts of her story. She spends countless hours perfecting a story in which Robbie and Cee end up together. A story that she believes they deserve. Briony also shows empathy through her depiction of Robbie through Part 2. Briony shows that she understands in excellent capacity how going to jail for a crime he did not commit has weighed on his soul. An example of this can be seen near the end of Part 2, when Robbie makes it to Dunkirk and meets the gypsy woman. “She looked right into him and saw his faults, and knew he’d been in prison” (McEwan 240). Robbie’s stint in prison is always on the surface of his mind. If he sees the woman and the first thought upon seeing her is “She knew I was in prison”, then that means his experience in prison is always weighing very heavily on his mind. It’s affected every corner of his consciousness. Since Briony is ultimately the author of this, and it never actually happened, this shows that Briony has a profound understanding on the state that Robbie would have been in during the war. One can infer that her awesome level of understanding of what she did to Robbie leads to an obsessiveness to correct it. This is why Briony is so determined and spent so much time on Atonement. She cannot fix it in real life, so she creates an alternate reality, one just as real, if not more real than life in her mind. Through her creation she shows a level of understanding, or empathy, that younger Briony could not begin to comprehend. Briony is thus not a despicable character, she is just a victim of circumstance. Briony was put into a position of such power, literally life altering power at an age where she just could not understand the gravity of the situation. It is not her fault her psyche had not developed by thirteen. Once she had grown up and realized her mistakes, she does more in an attempt to fix her mistake than most people would.

Briony is not despicable. Briony has a level of self reflexivity and empathy that most people do not possess. Just because Briony made a mistake when she was too young to really understand what was going on, does not mean she is a despicable character. Everybody makes mistakes, it is how one responds to those mistakes that truly show who they are. Briony responded to her mistake is a capacity that most people would not do. Briony dedicated her life to trying to fix something they can not fix, at the same time not letting herself achieve forgiveness. Briony is the opposite of despicable, Briony is commendable.

Answer to Christoff‘s blog post:

Christoff, I see you and I have a similar idea on Briony’s dedication to righting her wrong, but I did notice you mentioned how Briony actually thought she was right in Part 1, rather than my take on her just being oblivious to the gravity of the situation. I forgot that Briony thought Robbie was attacked Cecilia in the fountain scene. I think I tend to agree with your analysis of Part 1 and Briony’s reasoning more than my own. It seems much more “Briony” to assume the role of the protector, rather than just an oblivious kid, as even at the age of thirteen Briony was quite aware and intelligent. As always your writing is very insightful and I commend you on it. I like the addition of the Author’s Note as well.