Atonement Case
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Atonement blatantly exposes the lie of fiction itself. Although encapsulating, the reader is continually subjected to an alternative truth (the suspension of disbelief), which McEwan demonstrates through the “Come back to me” motif. He strongly focuses on our imaginations unintentional, misperception of observation. As the character of Briony develops, and inevitably attempts to atone her guilt, we too mature and become aware of deceptions of the novel. McEwan therefore challenges the idea of who is capable of telling a complete story about “what really happened?”.
Brionys compulsive obsession with order and neatness causes her to create a disillusion in which fiction consumes her thoughts and perceptions of reality. This is the reasoning behind her guilt that she will inevitably spend her life trying to atone. When Briony is writing the “The Tales of Arabella” she desires the control that fiction provides her (ability to create, alter and correct at will) and allows her to correct the disorder of life. Similarly, Brionys craving for completion and order causes her to misperceive the rape of Lola, “Her eyes confirmed the sum of all she knew and had recently experienced. The truth was in the symmetry”.
The most absorbing and disturbing aspect of Atonement is how it adds to McEwans ongoing exploration of the problem of knowing other minds, and the role of imagining, narrating, and story-telling in our efforts to capture reality and escape isolation. The very truth of the novel is destabilised by Cyril Connollys letter to Briony in part two. It appears that Briony is able to do just what Cyril Connolly suggests and atone for her crime by bringing the lovers closer in her world of fiction. The multiple perceptions, the exploration of the characters consciousness are therefore questioned to be a staged-out performance in Brionys imagination and ultimately an illusion of reality.
The first three parts of Atonement, written in the past tense, form together a retrospective narrative, which is not finally established until the end as originating from the older Briony. This ending however, does have a destabilising effect on the reader. When we discover that Briony herself has written the novel, all the events previously described, which shifted between actual events and the consciousness of the characters, are further put into question. The catalyst effect of learning that, “Robbie Turner died of septicaemia at Bray Dunes on 1 June 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in September of the same year by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station” allows the reader to conclude that the novel is continually tainted by the unreliability of memory and the psychological state of guilt.
The novel begins and ends with the performance of “The Trials of Arabella”, which dramatically reflects Brionys performance of her life that she has created in her imagination. The revelation