Atonement

“She was not playing Arabella because she wrote the play, she was taking the part because no other possibility had crossed her mind, because that was how Leon was to see her, because she was Arabella.”

Briony is old enough to feel like an adult, but she lacks the empathy and understanding that comes with real maturity. As such, she cannot imagine a world outside her own mind. Her shocked reaction to anyone other than Briony being the protagonist in the play is an ironic comment on her own life, in which she views herself as the protagonist and fails to comprehend the needs, lives, and agency of others.

“He might be thinking she was talking to him in code, suggestively conveying her taste for the full-blooded and sensual.”

Many of the characters lack the ability to convey their feelings to one another. The Tallis family represses their emotions and allows issues to fester internally, rather than give them voice. Robbie, who has essentially grown up in the Tallis home, struggles to convey his feelings to Cecilia, who in turn struggles to do the same to him. Their inability to communicate prefigures Briony’s misguided obfuscation of the truth.

“One could drown in irrelevance.”

As the youngest member of a family, Briony grows up around adults. The result of this is that she measures her self-worth by the amount of attention she can draw. Her writing is her way to win praise and adulation from the adults, who possess a maturity and a self-assurance that she envies and mimics. She abhors the idea of being irrelevant a feeling that will remain with her into adulthood.

“‘I’d rather have something bitter. Or even sour.’”

At this point in the novel, Cecilia does not know what she wants. She is in love with Robbie, but she does not yet realize it. The craving for something bitter or sour is a contrary desire. She tries to determine what she wants by defining herself in opposition to others because she lacks the ability to confront her actual desires.

“They had in fact seen a matinee pantomime at the London Palladium during which Lola had spilled a strawberry drink down her frock […].”

Lola, like Briony, is desperate to appear more mature. She lies about her visit to the theater, telling Paul Marshall that she saw a Shakespeare production rather than a children’s pantomime. Similarly, Paul lies in response, claiming to know all about the play when he knows very little. From their first interaction, Paul and Lola’s relationship is a tapestry of deceit and lies.

“And then, most important of all, she should set off in search of Briony because the collapse of the play was a terrible blow and the child would need all the comfort a mother could give.”

Emily, like the other Tallis family members, obstinately refuses to express her real emotions. A lifetime of guarding her emotions has prevented her from allowing herself to appear weak and vulnerable. As a consequence, she lacks the capacity to empathize with Briony. Briony is wrestling with her nascent maturity, but Emily believes that Briony is worried about the play. Emily’s emotional distance prevents her from understanding that the play is a symptom of Briony’s issues rather than the cause.

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”

Briony believes that she is on the cusp of adulthood, even though she is evidently still caught in a period of “oblivious daydreaming” (52). Briony will only be able to fully become an adult and realize the consequences of her actions when she learns to separate her daydreams from reality. Part of her immaturity is the inability to distinguish what is real and what is fiction. This inability will become life-threatening when she is diagnosed with dementia, but it will aid her in reimagining the past in her novel.

“Willing himself not to, he raised the book to his nostrils and inhaled.”

Robbie is caught between his raw, overwhelming feelings and his desire to maintain appearances. He knows that he must seem absurd when he puts the book to his nose, but he does it anyway, indicating that he is giving in and allowing himself to love Cecilia. This acceptance of emotion stands in stark contrast to the emotional repression of the Tallis family, and it will work against Robbie in the future, when others believe that he is incapable of controlling his impulses.

“Initially, a simple phrase chased round and round in Cecilia’s thoughts: Of course, of course. How had she not seen it? Everything was explained. The whole day, the weeks before, her childhood. A lifetime. It was clear to her now.”

Rather than a long, florid description of love, the stark, intimate details in the draft of Robbie’s letter shock Cecilia into a realization. The obscenity in the letter is a revelation, cutting through her repression and allowing her to see Robbie in a new light.

“That a girl so brittle and domineering should be brought this low by a couple of nine-year-old boys seemed wondrous to Briony, and it gave her a sense of her own power.”

Because Briony’s worldview is entirely self-centered, she treats every set back as a validation. Even as the twins conspire to ruin her play, she takes their behavior as a sign that she is correct, mature, and worthy of praise. Ironically, she feels more powerful for having failed, though she is unable to grasp the nuances or implications of her own failure.

“But then, it would probably have been impossible to talk her out of a dress that made it so difficult to walk. Attaining adulthood was all about the eager acceptance of such impediments.”

Briony correlates the discomfort of wearing a tight dress to the necessary difficulties one faces in adulthood. The superficial nature of the comparison reveals her lack of understanding of the burdens and responsibilities that come with being an adult. She knows nothing about experience, empathy, or the nuanced complexities of love. As such, her understanding of adulthood is fundamentally flawed and self-serving.

“She whispered his name with the deliberation of a child trying out the distinct sounds.”

Briony is not alone in her immaturity. Robbie and Cecilia are also inexperienced, especially in matters of love. Their fumbling in the library is a new experience for both of them. Robbie has studied anatomy and Cecilia has studied literature, but they cannot learn the experience of love from a book. Likening Cecilia’s speech to that of a child underscores the innocence of their encounter and deepens the tragic irony of Briony’s accusation.

“Even being lied to constantly, though hardly like love, was sustained attention; he must care about her to fabricate so elaborately over such a long stretch of time. His deceit was a form of tribute to the importance of their marriage.”

The lack of communication between Emily and Jack models the silence and repression that characterized their upbringing; they have problems in their marriage, but they never discuss these issues, preferring that they remain unspoken. As a consequence, the children do not receive the tools to properly express themselves and communicate with others. Cecilia and Robbie struggle to understand their feelings for one another, and Briony is unable to raise her concerns with her sister.

“Briony said it again, this time without the trace of a question. It was a statement of fact.”

Briony invents an accusation against Robbie in the same way that she invents her stories. She rewrites reality, editing her story to make it more convincing and treating a very serious allegation as though it were The Trials of Arabella. Briony does not understand the seriousness of her actions, so she searches for a precedent in her life and attempts to understand events through the lens of her fiction. Because she views herself as a master of fiction, she believes that her behavior is justified and essential.

“If you had done the right thing, young lady, with all your education, and come to me with this, then something could have been done in time and your cousin would have been spared her nightmare.”

Even before the full ramifications of Briony’s accusation against Robbie come to light, early reactions suggest that Robbie’s reputation is ruined. Briony’s false accusation has transformed Robbie from the intelligent young local boy into a monster who is a slave to his sexual urges. Emily’s dislike of Robbie now has validity, and she can use the letter and Briony’s accusation to further her agenda against him. Emily is as wrong as Briony in her assumptions about Robbie, but they are now working together to establish a truth that conforms to their mistaken perceptions of him.

“So at least someone can see through her wretched fantasies.”

As an adult, Cecilia dislikes her younger sister’s fiction. She does not think of it as a literature but only as another invention that Briony creates to impose her version of reality. No one will believe Cecilia that Briony’s story about Robbie is false, so she feels vindicated when people dislike Briony’s literary stories.

“The story could resume, the one that he had been planning on that evening walk.”

Robbie is similar to Briony in many ways. Like her, he tends to daydream and see the future as a story in which he is the protagonist. Unfortunately for Robbie, he is not the protagonist in Briony’s story. He is a secondary character, which Briony, as both his accuser and author, manipulates to create the story she wants to tell.

“The drama by the river might have been enough to sustain her all that time.”

Robbie believes that their encounter by the river will give Briony a single romantic memory that she will cherish for years to come. In this sense, Robbie is framing Briony as an immature and foolish young person. However, he feels the same way about his meeting in the library with Cecilia. That distinct memory of love becomes his motivation to survive prison and the war.

“I promise, you won’t hear another word from me.”

Robbie’s final words are tragically true. Neither Nettles nor the audience will ever hear another word from Robbie, as all the words he speaks after this point are Briony’s invention. From this point on, Robbie becomes her work of fiction, just as he did when she made a false accusation against him. Even though she aims to undo her accusation of Robbie in her novel, she still determines his words and actions, in a way, reinscribing her power and privilege over him.

“The novel of the future would be unlike anything in the past.”

Briony’s speculation about the novels of the future are ironic, given the metafictional nature of the novel itself: She is using the novel as a form to write in the future about events of the past. The Briony of the past speculates about future fiction as a radical, forward-thinking medium, when Briony will only use fiction in the future to look back to her past.

“So, for example, the child at the window whose account we read first – her fundamental lack of grasp of the situation is nicely caught.”

The feedback from the literary magazine regarding Briony’s story is an ironic criticism of Briony herself. The autobiographical story retells Briony’s experience of watching Robbie and Cecilia fight, but the critic’s feedback reminds Briony of her own lack of perspective when the events occurred. Only by putting her life into the context of fiction is Briony able to fully grasp the scope of her failure and her immaturity. Though the critic does not know it, he is not so much suggesting changes to the story as he is critiquing Briony’s past actions.

“It was a pathetic source of comfort, that he could not know what she had seen.”

Robbie does not know what Briony has experienced in the hospital—that being so close to suffering and death has changed her—but he knows what she did not see on the night she accused him of rape. Briony’s source of comfort is so weak because it is a reminder of how much she has hurt Robbie.

“They stood outside Balham tube station, which in three months’ time would achieve its terrible form of fame in the Blitz.”

Briony invents the final scene between Cecilia and Robbie. She places the couple at Balham tube station in a tragic juxtaposition between the place where they might have been able to realize their love and the place where Cecilia actually died, alone. Briony’s attempts to give the couple the loving lives they deserve is part of her desire to save her sister from a lonely, solitary death.