‘Atonement’ by Ian McEwan Quotes and Notes

[Pages:26]`Atonement' by Ian McEwan ? Quotes and Notes

`Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English: that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, you own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland what ideas have been admitting?'

They had reached the end of the gallery; and with tears of shame she ran off to her own room. (Epigraph) This highlights the idea of the power of fiction, the imagination and what it means to be English. This extract from `Northanger Abbey' also immediately encourages the reader to consider `Atonement' within the same pantheon as Austen's novels and, specifically, to apply Henry Tilney's words to the novel they are about to read. These words develop an ironic meaning as the novel progresses, due to the difference in setting. After all, crimes are being perpetrated without being known. One could argue that Briony's `tears of shame' are the novel.

The play ? for which Briony had designed the posters, programmes and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper ? was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch. (pg. 3) The very first lines of the novel begin with the mention of literature, underlining its importance throughout the text. The fact that this particular form of literature is about performance and artifice emphasises the theme of reality and appearance.

At some moments chilling, at others desperately sad, the play told a tale of the heart whose message, conveyed in a rhyming prologue, was that love which did not build a foundation on good sense was doomed. (pg. 3) This is very subjective, hyperbolic language. Whose perspective is this from? Very clearly written in the 3rd person but almost certainly Briony's point of view. Already, within the first paragraph, the reader has cause to question the narrator. This is not the sort of story one would typically expect from a young girl, implying that Briony is different. What other play begins with a message told in a rhyming prologue? Hint: `Romeo & Juliet'! This creates a link between both Briony and the greatest of English literature and the story about to unfold with one of the most famous love stories of all time.

The reckless passion of the heroine, Arabella, for a wicked foreign count is punished by ill fortune when she contracts cholera during an impetuous dash towards a seaside town with her intended (pg. 3) Foreshadowing of Robbie and Cecilia's relationship?

She took her daughter in her arms, onto her lap ? ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy (pg. 4) This is now from Emily Tallis's perspective. This random shift in perspective again forces the audience to question the narrator. Jane Austen also employed this technique, often providing thoughts and histories of side characters.

Whereas her big sister's room was a stew of unclosed books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays, Briony's was a shrine to her controlling demon: the model farm spread across a deep window ledge consisted of the usual animals, but all facing one way ? towards their owner ? as if about to break into song, and even the farmyard hens were neatly corralled. (pg. 4-5) Repetition of `un' suggests that her sister doesn't finish things. This is a contrast to Briony whom the audience first meets finishing something, and whose finished product they are themselves reading. This is foreshadowing for Cecilia whose life is unfinished (in that she dies at a young age) and who is even unable to finish sexual intercourse, due to Briony's interruption. The model farm highlights Briony's need for control and is a demonstration of her authorial desire to play God.

A mutant double acorn, fool's gold, a rain-making spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel's skull as light as a leaf. (pg. 5) Briony's secrets are interesting. The double acorn is a seed which has lost the ability to germinate, the fool's gold promises fortune but doesn't follow through, the spell is worthless, and the skull literally symbolises death. The only thing secret about these treasures is their location and, like the contents, promise greater things but can't deliver.

Only when a story was finished, all fates resolved and the whole matter sealed off at both ends so it resembled, at least in one respect, every other finished story in the world, could she feel immune, and ready to punch holes in the margins, bind the chapters with pieces of string, paint or draw the cover, and take the finished work to show to her mother, or her father, when he was home. (pg. 6) Highlights the superficial. Appearance/reality.

A world could be made in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm. The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word ? a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained. Her passion for tidiness was also satisfied, for an unruly world could be made just so. A crisis in a heroine's life could be made to coincide with hailstones, gales and thunder, whereas nuptials were generally blessed with good light and soft breezes. A love of order also shapes the principles of justice, with death and marriage the main engines of housekeeping, the former being set aside exclusively for the morally dubious, the latter a reward withheld until the final page. (pg. 7) The power of literature. This is the author/Briony reflecting on their own art and is akin to Austen's defence of the novel in `Northanger Abbey'. Despite what Briony thinks here about the advantages of the novel, `Atonement' does not conform to these expectations. There is pathetic fallacy used (the heat) but that differs greatly from the dramatic storms Briony images. Also consider that death is not set aside for the morally dubious as we see numerous victims of war die (a message on war itself) as well as being told of Robbie and Cecilia's deaths. The only marriage we see does not come on the final page and is certainly no reward.

That Lola, who was fifteen, and the nine-year-old twins, Jackson and Pierrot, were refugees from a bitter domestic civil war should have mattered more to Briony. (pg. 8) This is almost certainly the older Briony's perspective, speaking in hindsight, saying what she should have been concerned with.

She vaguely knew that divorce was an affliction, but she did not regard it as a proper subject. (pg. 8) Divorce does not fit with Briony's ideas of romance and `stories'. It is not a happy ending and cannot be undone.

Marriage was the thing, or rather, a wedding was, with its formal neatness of virtue rewarded, the thrill of its pageantry and banqueting, and dizzy promise of a lifelong union. A good wedding was an unacknowledged representation of the as yet unthinkable ? sexual bliss. In the aisles of country churches and grand city cathedrals, witnessed by a whole society of approving family and friends, her heroines and heroes reached their innocent climaxed and needed to go no further. (pg. 9) This perspective highlights Briony's na?vet?. Her insistence that the wedding is `the thing' places emphasis on superficial artifice. This also displays her sexual innocence, possibly explaining her misinterpretation of later events.

Like re-armament and the Abyssinia Question (pg. 9) This foreshadows the war.

This trio clearly had the knack of being what they were not. (pg. 10) Reality/illusion. Encourages the audience to question anything they hear about/from these three characters.

The best that could be said was that Arabella's lack of freckles was the sign ? the hieroglyph, Briony might have written ? of her distinction. Her purity of spirit would never be in doubt, though she moved through a blemished world. (pg. 10) Ironic as Lola (who plays Arabella) is about to lose her purity. Her purity (innocence) is never questioned throughout the novel, in regards the rape and her knowledge of her attacker.

Briony knew he had a point. This was precisely why she loved plays, or hers at least; everyone would adore her. (pg. 11)

Beautiful and dead, and barefoot, or perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with the pink ribbon straps... (pg. 14-15) Even when supposedly distraught and dramatic, Briony is concerned with the superficial and appearance.

Bernini's Triton. (pg. 18) Appearance/reality. The fountain is a reproduction and not the real thing. Triton was a Greek God and messenger of the sea. He was usually represented as a merman. This ties into the theme of appearance/reality as historically, sailors' encounters with mermaids were often actually dugongs/manatees. Mermaids were also often a symbol of disaster as they lured ships onto the rocks with their songs. Because Triton (a merman) stands over Robbie and Cecilia during the turning point of their relationship, he can be seen to be foreshadowing the misery they will later face and the oncoming disaster. Triton had a conch shell which could raise or calm waves, however this is subverted somewhat when it is revealed that the fountain "could blow through his conch a jet only two inches high". This is underwhelming, much like Robbie and Cecilia's thwarted relationship. First appearance of water as a motif.

Could not conceal the ugliness of the Tallis home ? barely forty years old, bright orange brick, squat, lead-paned baronial Gothic, to be condemned one day in an article by Pevsner, or one of his team, as a tragedy of wasted chances. (pg. 19) Appearance/reality. The Tallis house is in the Gothic style, despite being barely forty years old and, thus, too young to be truly Gothic. Pevsner (and his team) wrote architectural guides to the UK. This comment about their condemnation demonstrates perspective and hindsight. The description of a `tragedy of wasted chances' could also be used to describe the novel.

Cecilia's grandfather, who grew up over an ironmonger's shop and made the family fortune with a series of patents on padlocks, bolts, latches and hasps. (pg 19) These are all things used to keep secrets.

The vase she was looking for was on an American cherry-wood table by the French windows which were slightly ajar. (pg. 20) The mention of `American' and `French' foreshadows the war.

By the unplayed, untuned harpsichord and the unused rosewood music stands. (pg. 20) The focus here is on appearance, rather than use.

Richardson's Clarissa. (pg. 21) This is one of the longest novels in the English language. In it Clarissa is raped (like Lola) and betrayed by her family (like Cecilia). The title character's name is not unlike Cecilia. Indeed, Austen makes reference to the novel `Cecilia' by Frances Burney in `Northanger Abbey'. In this, an orphan heiress must make her own way in London, much in the same way that Cecilia has to after she disowns her family after Robbie's trial. The fact that she is constantly reading and not finishing, again underlines the unfinished nature of Cecilia's story.

The ancestors were irretrievably sunk in a bog of farm labouring, with suspicious and confusing changes of surnames among the men, and common-law marriages unrecorded in the parish registers. (pg. 21) The phrasing of `irretrievably sunk in a bog' demonstrates Cecilia's opinion of the lower working classes. This explains why she is so quick to assume that Danny Hardman is responsible for raping Lola. The fact that she made only a `half-hearted start' on the family tree, again underlines the unfinished nature of Cecilia's story.

A hangover from his Communist Party time ? another abandoned fad, along with his ambitions in anthropology, and the planned hike from Calais to Istanbul. (pg. 22) Communism doesn't seem to fit Robbie. This is about the value of community and against the bourgeoisie. This is ironic given Mr Tallis is paying for his education. The idea of hobbies as abandoned fads creates a link with Cecilia who, it has already been identified, also does not finish or see things through. The hike is foreshadowing Robbie's later activities. Calais is in France, and Istanbul in Turkey. The coming war which Robbie will be involved with will stretch across Europe from France to Turkey. He will later hike across France in Part 2, though not as he imagined.

It had once belonged to her Uncle Clem, whose funeral, or re-burial at the end of the war she remembered quite well: the gun carriage arriving at the country churchyard, the coffin draped in the regimental flag, the raised swords, the bugle at the graveside. (pg. 22) This foreshadows Robbie's ultimate fate.

Meissen porcelain. (pg. 23) German company, but comes to represent the English.

In order to achieve a natural chaotic look ... the flowers had simply been dropped in the vase in the same carefree spirit with which they had been picked. (pg. 23) Contrast with Briony.

His death just a week before the Armistice. (pg. 24) Foreshadows Robbie's fate but also places emphasis on family. The fact that he died just a week before the Armistice and that Robbie dies just before he can leave Dunkirk ? so close to being saved, makes a statement about the waste of life during war.

`How's Clarissa?' ... `I'd rather read Fielding any day' (pg. 25) The first time the reader sees Robbie and Cecilia communicate, they are talking about literature, creating a link between the couple and this in the reader's mind. Fielding refers to Henry Fielding who is known for his satire.

She saw his eyes again, green and orange flecks, like a boy's marble. (pg. 26) By comparing Robbie's eyes to a marble, McEwan makes him seem young and innocent, like a child, which ultimately makes his fate harder to swallow.

He was play-acting. (pg. 27) Appearance/reality.

The whole stature had acquired around its northerly surfaces a blueish-green patina. (pg. 28) Like the family, becoming tarnished by the events of the day.

Drowning herself would be his punishment. (pg. 30) The motif of water appears again. This may be a reference to Virginia Woolf, to whose writing this first part of the novel is compared by Cyril Connelly in Part 3.

It was difficult to see because the roiling surface had yet to recover its tranquillity. (pg. 30) Water, throughout the novel, is symbolic of cleansing (something required in order to gain atonement), yet here the roiling surface symbolises the trouble to come for these two. Their lives will never again `recover its tranquillity'.

Briony came down at intervals to check on his progress. She was forbidden to help, and Jackson, of course, had never laundered a thing in his life. (pg. 32) This punishment (for an entirely understandable thing) does not help Jackson, and neither Betty nor Briony approve of it. This emphasises Emily's distance from the family and her ineffectualness as a mother.

Briony suspected that behind her older cousin's perfect manners was a destructive intent. (pg. 34) The word `suspected' makes it clear that this is only Briony's thought and she is, in fact, reading into things. This creates a similarity with Cecilia who spends all of Chapter Two reading too much into Robbie's words and actions, though, of course, for an entirely different reason.

Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? ... For, though it offended her sense of order, she knew it was overwhelmingly probably that everyone else had thoughts like hers. She knew this, but only in a rather arid way; she didn't really feel it. (pg. 36) Empathy. Briony struggles to imagine being other people. This is a very childish, egotistic viewpoint. It is ironic as Briony writes from both Cecilia and Robbie's perspective throughout the novel. This is part of her atonement.

Dust from along the skirting board had dirtied her hands and the back of her dress. (pg. 37) She is about to dirty her hands herself. This is symbolic of the innocence which is soon to be lost.

A story was direct and simple, allowing nothing to come between herself and her reader ? no intermediaries ... in a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world ... Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing. (pg. 37) Briony's need for control, yet as part of her atonement, she must `embody' Cecilia and Robbie (intermediaries). This foreshadows her decision to give the couple a happy ending ? she has written it down, thus making it real, at least for the audience.

A proposal of marriage. Briony would not have been surprised. She herself had written a tale in which a humble woodcutter saved a princess from drowning and ended by marrying her ... It made perfect sense. Such leaps across boundaries were the stuff of daily romance. (pg. 38) Briony's first instinct is for the romantic, to suspect a marriage proposal and she relates this to her own stories, which are much like fairy tales ? very childish. To say that `it made perfect sense' is strange; what does Briony know of romance? Only what she has read in stories.

What strange power did he have over her. Blackmail? Threats? (pg. 38) Briony is looking for the dramatic. Her imagination is fuelled by the literature she has read.

The sequence was illogical ? the drowning scene, followed by a rescue, should have preceded the marriage proposal. (pg. 39) Briony is confused because what she sees does not align with the story she has written/the stories she has read. She imagines Robbie and Cecilia as her creations and doesn't understand why they have not followed the plot she has laid out for them.

Unseen, from two storeys up, with the benefit of unambiguous sunlight (pg. 39) Ironic as, despite the benefit of unambiguous sunlight, Briony still misunderstands what she sees.

How easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong. (pg. 39) Foreshadowing. Briony is about to get `everything wrong, completely wrong'. The repetition here emphasises the gravity of the mistake she is about to make.

The scene would still have happened, for it was not about her at all. (pg. 40) Briony knows this logically, however she is still childish and her instinct is still for the egotistic. This also highlights the importance of the witness to this moment. Had she not seen it, the scene would still have happened, yes, but the following events may not have.

She could write the scene three times over, from three points of view. (pg. 40) This is precisely what she has done: from her perspective, Cecilia's perspective, and later, Robbie also recalls this moment.

Six decades later she would describe how at the age of thirteen she had written her way through a whole history of literature, beginning with stories derived from the European tradition of folk tales, through drama with simple moral intent, to arrive at an impartial psychological realism which she had discovered for herself, one special morning during a heat wave in 1935. (pg. 41) The older Briony reflecting on her own writing style. The `folk tales' are the story of the humble woodcutter and the princess, while the `drama with simple moral intent' is the play `The Trials of Arabella' which was meant to influence her brother, Leon. The realism is this, Part 1 of this novel, which is the reader has in their hands. This statement emphasises the importance of this moment ? without it, there would be no book. It is a coming-of-age moment for Briony.

It is possible that the contemplation of a crooked finger, the unbearable idea of other minds and the superiority of stories over plays were thoughts she had had on other days. (pg. 41) This asks the audience to question everything they read. If the narrator casts doubt on something as inconsequential as `the contemplation of a crooked finger', then what else is there that cannot be believed?

By refusing to condemn her sister's shocking near-nakedness. (pg. 41) Briony is clearly proud of herself for this, yet her phrasing and word choice makes it clear how hypocritical she is being. By `refusing to condemn' and calling it `shocking' she implies that it is something which could be condemned. Briony here acts as judge, which relates to her fondness for playing God.

`The whole thing's a mistake. It's the wrong ...' She snatched a breath and glanced away, a signal, Cecilia sensed, of a dictionary word about to have its first outing. `It's the wrong genre!' She pronounced it, as she thought, in the French way, monosyllabically, but without quite getting her tongue round the `r'. (pg. 45) Briony is, again, not getting things right. Here it is mispronunciation ? a form of communication ? and Cecilia is unable to understand what she says/means. Could this comment ? that it is the wrong genre ? be applied to the story she ultimately writes or this novel?

Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry. (pg. 47) There is a sense of inevitability in Cecilia's wonderings. She never considers that she will not marry, because, as a woman, that is not a choice open to her (Gender). She does, though, have a different attitude towards romance than Briony. There is irony here as Paul Marshall is the man whose actions stop her from marrying.

All day long, she realised, she had been feeling strange, and seeing strangely, as though everything was already long in the past. (pg. 48) Everything is `already long in the past'. Is this Briony's perspective in writing?

In fact, she may even have been standing in the water ? against such light it was difficult to tell. (pg. 56) Appearance/reality.

Her arm was much thinner and lighter than his mother's. (pg. 57) Appearance/reality. Despite copying her mother's words and actions, Lola cannot comfort her brother in the way that a mother can. Physically, she is not her mother.

The soft consonants suggested an unthinkable obscenity, the sibilant ending whispered the family's shame. (pg. 57) About the word `divorce'. This is certainly the voice of a writer, concerned with the word, rather than the thing itself.

A big empty chin like Desperate Dan's. (pg. 58) This is an anachronism. Desperate Dan, the world's strongest man, and a Wild West character, first appeared in 1937, two years after the events of Part 1. This causes the reader to question the narrator. The fact that Lola compares Paul to Desperate Dan also highlights the power he has over her.

They knew that the business of newspapers was momentous: earthquakes and train crashes, what the government and nations did from day to day, and whether more money should be spent on guns in case Hitler attacked England. (pg. 59) Provides context/setting. The mention of Hitler foreshadows the later war, while the earthquakes and train crashes suggest tragedy still to come.

Dropped away into a light sleep in which his young sisters had appeared, all four of them, standing around his bedside, prattling and touching and pulling at his clothes. He woke, hot across his chest and throat, uncomfortably aroused (pg. 60) This is a disturbing insight into Paul's mind. This knowledge hangs over his interactions with Lola. This is something Briony has clearly invented for her narrative, being unable to know such things, and is something she has created to explain later events. This is in opposition to her imposition of plot onto Cecilia and Robbie.

`Hamlet.' They had in fact seen a matinee pantomime at the London Palladium during which Lola had spilled a strawberry drink down her frock, and Liberty's was right across the street. `One of my favourites,' Paul said. It was fortunate that he too had neither read nor seen the play, having studied chemistry. But he was able to say musingly, `To be or not to be.' `That is the question,' she agreed. `And I like your shoes'. (pg. 60-61) Lola attempts to portray herself as `grown up', going to London to see Shakespeare (Literature) and buying trousers (Gender) at Liberty's, however this is immediately subverted by the truth that it was a matinee (performed during the day) pantomime (musical comedy aimed at children) and she had spilled a strawberry drink (a sweet, childish drink, and a clumsy gesture). Both characters pretend to have seen the play -> appearance/reality. They quote the infamous `to be or not to be' soliloquy, in which Hamlet considers death and suicide and the unfairness of life. The fact that this is one of the most famous lines of literature highlights the two characters as pretending ? they demonstrate only superficial knowledge ? but the reference to this particular soliloquy introduces ideas of death and unfairness which appear later in the novel. The fact that Lola follows this reference, which is quite profound, with a comment about Paul's shoes draws attention to their superficiality.

`Amo amas amat' (pg. 62) This is the Latin conjugation for the verb `to love'. This is a childish response, something Lola has clearly learned in school, and also demonstrates her class, as only higher class children would have learned Latin at this time. The fact that the verb is `to love' also emphasises her youth and foreshadows their later relationship.

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