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A* Atonement Exemplar Essay 5
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‘No character in this novel is completely innocent.’ To what extent do you agree with this view?
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Atonement practice essay 5‘No character in this novel is completely innocent.’ To what extent do you agree with this view?
If we are declare that no character is completely innocent in Atonement, we would perhaps
have to ignore the extent of Robbie’s heroism in Part Two in addition to the equally ruined life of his
lover, Cecilia, as both characters eternally damned for crimes committed by others. Nevertheless,
the war crimes committed by the soldiers in Part Two together with the guilt of Atonement’s passive
characters – namely, Lola, Emily, Leon and Jack Tallis – mean that the sin of omission confuses the
idea of guilt so that all characters are not entirely innocent. The unambiguous criminal culpability of
Paul Marshall and possibly Briony would seem to give credence to this view.
Indeed, Paul Marshall is immediately depicted as a potentially guilty character by way of his
grotesque physiognomy which mirrors his unpleasant sexuality; we learn that his ‘ear hair’ was
‘comically kinked like pubic hair’, presenting him as rather predatory when considered alongside his
‘uncomfortably aroused’ state after an erotic dream about his younger sisters. The use of the verb
‘aroused’ here clearly sets him us a suspect in the context of a rape and comes to characterise his
heinous crime which makes his innocence unquestionable. McEwan does not spare us the graphic
details of the crime in order to emphasise this view as Lola is described as being ‘prized open and
taken’. The dynamic verbs here are deliberately grotesque and not indicative of actions we would
expect of human behaviour, thus adding an element of inhumanity to Marshall’s crime which
undoubtedly accentuates his criminality. Combined with the fact that he allows Robbie to take the
blame for his crime, he is therefore the strongest advocate for the view that Atonement’s characters
are not innocent and is in fact and unscrupulous, unrepentant criminal. It could be argued also that
Briony is criminal given her lie to the police, the consequences of which come to dominate the rest
of the novel in the form of the protagonist’s atonement. Her four, monosyllabic words ‘Yes, I saw
him’ would appear to be sufficient to see her as a character who is not innocent, since this lie to the
police destroys Robbie’s life when she must surely have known that he was not guilty. Crucially,
Briony clearly wants us to see her as guilty through the use of the older voice throughout Part One,
which is laced with disdain in remembering how her younger self though that ‘to be the object of
adult hatred…was promotion’. It seems indisputable that if a 13-year-old can think in this way, then
they are culpable, and Briony’s motive seems extremely shallow and selfish here. Together with the
fact that Briony spends the rest of her life atoning for the crime, it is thus suggested strongly that she
is lacking in innocence.
However, some forgiveness should be afforded to Briony in view of not just her age, but also
the passivity of the adults, who gave her no chance to retract her evidence. As a result, Briony’s guilt
is questionable. Alternatively, PC Vockins – symbolising the police force – seems unambiguous in his
responsibility for the injustice done to Robbie. Supporting the traditionally negative view of the
police in crime fiction, McEwan presents Vockins as grossly ineffectual; he does not fulfil his purpose
as interrogator given that his questioning of Briony is phrased in the form of impassive statements
such as ‘You saw him, then.’. The declarative instead of the interrogative demonstrates how the
police fail in their purpose, as we feel that a proper interrogation of Briony would allow Vockins to
understand how Briony’s need to be the centre of attention makes it likely that she is not telling the
truth. It is possible that he is prepared to convict Robbie simply on the grounds of his class, alluding
to the way in which the working-classes often become scapegoats in crime fiction. Likewise, Emily
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