Weekly Reader: Atonement by Ian McEwan; A Moving Story About False Accusations and The Dangers of Imagination

Weekly Reader: Atonement by Ian McEwan; A Moving Story About False Accusations and The Dangers of Imagination
By Julie Sara Porter,
Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: While having a great imagination is great for creating works of art and literature, it can also lead to problems when you have trouble separating fantasy from reality. This situation is faced by Briony Tallis, the young protagonist with too much imagination and too little control over it in Ian McEwan's moving and emotional novel, Atonement.

When the novel begins, Briony is writing a play to entertain her cousins and her older brother returning home from University. She temporarily takes a break from her Gothic thriller about a young naive heroine ravished by a wicked man and sees her older sister, Cecilia and Robbie Turner, a maid's son, both barely dressed emerge from a nearby pond. Briony's mind is filled with the plots of various Gothic and Romantic tales and is alarmed. She becomes even more alarmed when she sees what she believes is a violent encounter between Cecilia and Robbie (but is in reality nothing of the kind). This event and Briony's misconceptions of it lead to a chain of events which result in Robbie's dismissal and arrest and Cecilia's estrangement from her family.

While the middle drags somewhat dealing with Robbie and Cecilia's time during the war and taking tentative steps towards a relationship, it picks up once Briony reenters the scene. Briony is  a multi-faceted character no matter how regrettable. In the beginning she is a spunky vibrant girl filled with romance and imagination and wanting to protect her sister no matter the cost. Later she becomes withdrawn and hesitant but is still driven to make things right. She is never a heartless girl enjoying the pain she gave Robbie but what's done is done and what's said is said and she can't take it back no matter how much she wants it to be.

The last sections of the book focus on Briony's desire for atonement and forgiveness which only makes things worse. A violent act really did occur and not only did Robbie get arrested for it but the real culprit receives no punishment and becomes a member of Briony's family as though a constant reminder of her mistaken assumption and regrets.
Briony volunteers as a nurse in WWII to achieve some good works in the world but only receives anguish and further sadness as she realizes nothing that she does will stop the soldiers from dying.

Even her final conversation with Robbie and Cecilia which is partly an apology and closure is tempered by a final revelation that provides no closure at all among her, Cecilia, and Robbie. Even as an old woman and successful author, Briony is still haunted by the lengths her imagination took her.

In the end, Briony Tallis does not seek atonement from Cecilia and Robbie for her actions, she seeks it from herself. Whether she gets it or not is up to the Reader's perspective...their own imagination.