Seth Lamb "Not so Despicable Briony: The Clever Mask of Childish Naivety"

Seth Lamb

Mr. Breaton

ENG 4U

May 25, 2015

Not so Despicable Briony: The Clever Mask of Childish Naivety

There is a reason why the law treats children with less contempt than adults, it’s because society realizes that on average, children are less educated, less informed, and generally subpar in terms of reasoning, understanding, and rational decision making. It’s not their fault, it’s just that their brains haven’t developed fully which means they’re inexperienced when it comes to comprehending more mature themes, ideas that any sensible adult would easily understand, so the law and consequently the government decide to go easier on them until they’ve reached the point where they are fully self-aware of the results of their actions.

In the book Atonement by author Ian McEwan, Briony Tallis is a young girl who has not yet reached that point in her life when she commits her despicable act, the point where she doesn’t fully understand the events she witnesses nor the consequences her actions have on the people whose lives she affects, and she goes about her life in part one as just an innocent, naïve little girl who believes she’s doing the right thing; protecting her sister from the clutches of the woman molester Robbie Turner, as proven when she thinks to herself,  “Real life, her life now beginning, had sent her a villain in the form of an old family friend” (McEwan 148) and, “Together, the Tallis children would see this brute off, see him safely out of their lives” (McEwan 148). Naturally for any adult reading this book, it’d be expected that they find this behaviour mildly or even extremely aggravating, especially since they have the most experience in dealing with children and their sometimes infuriating, imperious behaviour as displayed by Briony in part one. However, as stated in the first paragraph, it’s not entirely her fault, some of the blame can be laid on the development of the human brain, and society seems to agree (juvenile detention instead of criminal records and “adult” jail, for example). So do the actions she takes to try to atone for her crime at such an impressionable age redeem her? A strong argument could be made supporting her redemption and ultimately, her atonement.

The first sign that Briony realizes that she has done something horribly wrong and ruined her family’s interpersonal relationships is in part two, when we learn from Cecilia’s letter to Robbie that Briony has enlisted at a hospital as a nurse. Why would this be a sign of her self-awareness? Well, for starters, her job description could be described as helping people in need, to try to save them from the cold grasp of death. Perhaps this is one way in which she is giving back to a world where she took away joy, in other words, a method of apologizing for what she has done. The second clue is also in part three, when she pays a visit to her sister (we later learn that this section was entirely imagined) where she says to her sister, “What I did was terrible. I don’t expect you to forgive me” (McEwan 318). It’s here that we learn that Briony, at this point in the story, is completely aware of what she’s done and the pain she’s inflicted on her sister and Robbie, and she admits it. However, that is not the ultimate clue for suggesting her redemption. Briony Tallis truly achieves atonement in part four, “London 1999”, when the reader makes the startling discovery that parts two and three were fictional, albeit with some historical truth. At this point, Briony is alone in her crime. Cecilia and Robbie are dead, which means that Briony can no longer seek forgiveness from them. Her only option at this point is to forgive herself, and what better way to do that than to write a book in which the people she hurt most are given what they had stolen from them: happiness, love, joy. Briony asks herself, “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” (McEwan 350). The reason why she writes this novel is because that is exactly what she is trying to do, by revealing the truth while at the same time deciding that the outcome for Cecilia and Robbie is one of happiness, she has found a way to forgive herself. She has decided that atonement can never be truly reached, as indicated when she comes to the conclusion that “it was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all” (McEwan 351). In this realization she has forgiven herself, and thereby achieved atonement, the seemingly impossible task that she made possible through spending her entire life on trying to make Cecilia and Robbie’s lives better, even if it was just a piece of fiction.

Comment: Regarding Elcie’s post and to a greater extent everyone else’s I’ve been noticing a general pattern in all of the posts that I have read so far, and that is almost everyone deeply despises Briony after reading part one. What I’m curious about is whether we’re not looking at this from a fairer point of view? How many thirteen year olds do you know or have met that are fully self-aware and actually care about the consequences of their actions? Now compare that to the number of thirteen year olds who are self-centered, pin the blame on others whenever they do something wrong, and generally act like entitled, self-serving brats. We’ve all met them, and chances are that some of us acted exactly the same way when we were that age. So I’m wondering if the anger that is directed at Briony is somewhat unjust. Should we cut her some slack? The law seems to think so, otherwise they’d be sending juveniles to “real” prison where they risk all sorts of heinous, despicable crimes such as sexual and mental abuse, as well as handing out criminal records that don’t expire for the rest of their lives. This is the biggest problem I have with Elcie’s posting: in it she describes the “evil” that resides in Briony and is what is responsible for Briony’s “sin”. I completely disagree with this, mainly because of two reasons. The first reason is the one I iterated on in my own posting, where I explained the childish naivety that accompanies most children throughout their single digit years and well into their teenage ones, and the second one is that “evil” carries a serious and harsh meaning to it, a meaning that I feel is too severe to be imposed on Briony. By that I mean that in order to be evil, you are maliciously seeking immoral or malevolent action against someone. I don’t think Briony was doing that, in fact she was doing the opposite in her mind. She believed that she was committing a morally sound action because she thought she was helping rid her family of a sexual maniac. To me that does sound like a virtuous act, does it not? An immoral person might have simply ignored the rape case or even committed the rape themselves. So, I ask again: was Briony being intentionally malevolent, or was she simply confused and of course, naïve? That is the question Elcie should consider before tossing out words with such a strong meaning attached.