Shayna Allan: What's Not to Like?

Shayna Allan

Mr. Breaton

ENG4U1

May 25, 2015

What’s Not to Like?

While reading part 1 I personally found Briony to be self-centered, pretentious and conceited. It was easy to see the negative aspects of her personality, and it was only later at the end of part 3 and in part 4 that I was finally able to glimpse some her good qualities as well. The fact that all her bad qualities and stupid mistakes define her, makes it easy to dislike her. But it is not until you dig deeper that you realize what a tragic character she is and what a tragic life she has lived – living her whole life plagued by guilt and self-loathing over a simple mistake made in her childhood.

As I mentioned above it is easy to dislike Briony, and we all immediately judge and look down on Briony as being a stupid, silly, naïve little girl. However, we were not brought up as she was, and we were not raised and taught to live to the standards of the Victorian era with all their strict ideals and morals; she is a product of her upbringing. We are quick to judge, yet we probably don’t even understand what it was like for her to be put in these situations and see these encounters she has most likely been taught her while life are wrong. Her upbringing coupled with the fact that she was only a child trying to deal with adult situations, may not absolve her of her crime but certainly goes a long way (for me anyway) to make me sympathetic towards her, and more lenient and forgiving of what she did. She was only a child after all, and what child doesn’t make mistakes? How many of you can say that there is not a single thing you regret dong in your life because you realized too late what a mistake it was?

For the one mistake that Briony made as a child, she suffers for it for her whole life: “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” (McEwan 162). Her world is turned upside down, as her family has been ripped apart and she knows that she was the cause of it. Her redeeming quality is that she realizes what a mistake she made and attempts to make up for it for the rest of her life. Briony even writes herself in her book as everything we hated about her, deliberately, so that every reader would immediately dislike her as much as she dislikes herself for what she did. She made sure that the blame would fall on her, and that she would live forever as this stupid child that ruined the lives of everyone around her; this was her way of further punishing herself.

As we learn in parts 3 and 4, Briony has spent her whole life obsessing over her book trying to get it right. She has obviously realized what a grave mistake she made that day she accused Robbie and has been trying her whole life to fix and set it right. Additionally, by this point I no longer saw her as the spoiled, selfish girl she was back in part 1. She becomes a nurse and dedicates her life to helping people. We see her capacity for kindness and compassion when she is with Luc, he asked her, “‘Do you love me?’ She hesitated. ‘Yes.’ No other reply was possible. Besides, for that moment, she did. He was a lovely boy who was a long way from his family and he was about to die” (McEwan 292). Briony has become a concerned, remorseful and kindhearted person. She dedicates her life to helping others, and is constantly trying to make up for what she did. She gives Robbie and Cee the happy ending she always wanted them to have and believes they deserve. Furthermore, the fact that she realizes that she doesn’t deserve to have them forgive her just goes to show the full extent to which she has grown and changed.

Overall, Briony has truly changed from the self-centered and conceited person she once was. She has devoted her life to others and has genuinely become a selfless and caring individual. Her guilt that has compelled her to try and atone for her past mistakes shows that she realized what she did was wrong and hurtful, and she has zealously and diligently been searching for a way ever since to indemnify herself, and to gift Robbie and Cecilia with the happy and loving life they were deprived of.

Tierney, I found it insightful to read your blog post and I thought you brought up a few good points. I like how you discussed the reasons why she distanced herself from her family, and credited it to her trying to make up for what she did. I also liked how you talked about how her actions in parts 3 and 4 (especially her self-realizations) added to her character and made her seem for human and redeemable. Overall, I thought your post was very well written and has some very insightful and thought provoking ideas contained within it.