On a stifling day, thirteen year old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and student at Cambridge. Because of Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination, she sees future medical student Robbie Turner as a maniac after walking in on her sister and Robbie having sex in the library.
When Briony’s cousin, Lola, is attacked in the woods, Briony testifies that she saw the perpetrator, Robbie Turner. The accusation is not just. her prosecution stems merely from resentment and delusional decision-making.
Thus, begins the unfortunate lives of Robbie, Cecilia, and Briony— Briony’s accusation is the catalyst for Robbie and Cecilia’s separation.
The reader is given a slight history of Cecilia and Robbie’s relationship. While the Tallis’ are a benefactor in Robbie’s education, Cecilia and Robbie have always been in different social circles.
Estranged throughout the years, they were never able to develop a relationship, so it is quite abrupt and unbelievable when the two characters immediately pine for one another just after a heated moment at a fountain
Cecilia dramatically writes, “Come back to me”; Robbie reminisces upon their time in the library while traversing along French battlegrounds.
Style Prevails Over Plot
After three years in prison, Robbie is enlisted in the British military during World War II. Lies, betrayal, war-torn lovers all elements for cliché literature, yet McEwan writes beyond plot.
However, when it comes to describing scenery, McEwan reigns like a monarch over the kingdom of imagery. What propels Atonement is McEwan’s decadent sentences impregnated with rich culture, establishing a history for the setting he describes.
References to Art
When Cecilia strolls along the Tallis estate she walks through the kissing gate and “[comes] up behind the fountain and its retaining wall and half-scale reproduction of Bernini’s Triton in the Piazza Barberini in Rome. The muscular figure, squatting so comfortably on his shell, could blow through his conch a jet only two inches high, the pressure was so feeble, and the water fell back over his spine, leaving a glistening dark green stain.” (17).
The minute details build tension in the scene: McEwan’s employment of using inanimate objects as envoys of tumultuous feelings and confusion contributes to Cecilia’s state of mind.
To another extent, McEwan’s sentence structure folds upon itself, making its convolution an element, which allows a reader to find layers of possible connotations behind the sculpture.
When McEwan describes Briony as a Pre-Raphaelite, he creates a persona indescribable outside of any other words. The imagines of glimmering patinas shimmering off Briony’s curly locks, describe characters uniquely. McEwan is innovative with his intertwining references to art.
Study of Redemption
However, what is most compelling is McEwan’s introspection into the nature of redemption and human mistakes. Questions such as why people, even the young and naïve, do inherently wrong actions are always looming over the characters in effect of Briony’s crime.
After a lifetime of contemplation and writing the story of her egregious mistake, Briony still ponders upon the “offences against veracity” asking herself “How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding the outcomes, she is also God?”
Ian McEwan combines the elements of beloved genres— brushstrokes of romance and histrionic war scenes, along with the study of the human psyche and philosophy make Atonement a piece of literature enjoyable stylistically and beyond reproach in its audacious strides, challenging the traditional themes associated with the trite love story.
