Pierce Irvine - Through The Mistakes, Is There Good?

Pierce Irvine

Mr. Breaton

ENG4U

May 25, 2015

Through The Mistakes, Is There Good?

Throughout the painful events in Part One of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Briony is depicted as this know-it-all, attention seeking, spoiled brat that thinks she deserves to know, and therefore does know, everything. So I will admit that I, and many other members of the class, despised Briony at this point, and for good reason. In Part One her character is designed to be hated, while the characters whose lives she is ruining (Robbie and Cecilia) are written to make you feel sorry for them and wish that things will go better for them. But, Briony was a young child in Part One (around 13 years old), and since then, of course, she has aged and matured to where we see her in Part Three, and later, in “London 1999”. We, as people, age and with that age we gain knowledge of the world, whether through formal education, social interactions or life lessons. Right now, if you were to look back 10 years, or to when you were a child or teenager, you might think of yourself as stupid and childish for making bad decisions. But, as we mature, we understand that mistakes and misunderstandings are somewhat expected of young people. However, as we are reading Part One, we tend to forget how young Briony is because of her advanced speech and “grownup” actions, making her seem more mature than she really is. Thus, we treat her as an adult, in the sense that she gets punished by our feelings, more so than say the twins, who act childish and are easily recognised as young children.

In Part Three Briony, now a young adult, has become a nurse and is being strictly taught what, and what not, to do when treating patients. Already, we see her looking through all of the men that have come back from the war, looking for Robbie so that she can apologize and attempt to make her atonement to him. Later, she wants to do the same with Cecilia, but this obviously doesn't work out in either case. This takes us to “London 1999”, where Robbie and Cecilia are dead and Briony is an old, sad and sickly woman in her 70s. We see that, as a person, Briony has grown, yet still shows remorse for her childhood actions. Almost 60 years later, Briony feels guilt for what she did as a child to Cecilia,  even though she was only 13 years old and, at the time, thought she was protecting her sister from a maniac that wanted to rape her “Cecilia, whom she ought to protect . . . She had cast herself as her sister’s protector” (McEwan 114-115). Her feelings are understandable, but she should not have handled the situation like she did. She came to her own conclusion and misinterpreted what she saw and read. She would have been better off asking Cecilia about the letter and to explain the actions between Robbie and her. She should have talked to adults about it, and most importantly, she should NOT have convinced herself of the lie that she saw Robbie attacking Lola in the faux temple at night.

The whole idea of the book Atonement, as written by Briony, is that since she can no longer possibly apologize to those people that she harmed all those years ago, the best thing she can do before she loses her memories, is to write about them. Whether the facts are true or not in her version, the point gets across, that she has spent most of her life desperately trying to make amends for the actions of an ignorant young girl, by writing and rewriting time and time again, a novel dedicated to the lives she ruined. “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” (McEwan 351). All in the hope that she can be given atonement, but knowing it will never happen. Writing the book in an attempt to achieve her own atonement, so that she can feel better about herself, all the while knowing that to anyone else reading it, the book will mean nothing and be just another item on a shelf. But to Briony, keeping Cecilia and Robbie alive means everything.

Comment

Emma: I really enjoyed reading your blogpost. It was really well written and your argument is good … until the second last paragraph. Here, I have to disagree with you. I don’t think Briony wants to “share the truth, that Robbie is innocent, with as many people as possible”, in fact, she is sharing her happy version of the truth. Yes, she is honest in that “There was a crime” (McEwan 351) and she probably is telling the truth about her part in ruining two people’s lives, but that’s where her honesty ends. The version of the novel she plans to share with the world has Robbie and Cecilia living happily ever after, which they don’t. Also, she’s afraid to publish before she dies, because it may cause Paul and Lola Marshall to sue her, so again, this shows her as not being as honorable and good as you may think she is.