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Essay, Crime Writing: Explore the significance of guilt in the novel Atonement (23/25)
This is a thorough, reviewed and edited essay exploring in depth the significance of the key theme, guilt, in the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan.
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As the title ‘Atonement’ suggests, the feeling of guilt is an enduring emotion and is feltkeenly by the character of Briony. Her arguably well-intentioned but foolish accusation of
Robbie leads to his wrongful imprisonment and separation from his newfound love Cecilia,
as well as ultimately leading to their untimely deaths. McEwan’s choice to provide layered
narrative voices allows us to see Briony’s guilt develop and explore how it permeates the
novel, particularly the second half, with a pervasive and inescapable sense of guilt.
The end of Part One is the last we hear from Briony’s 13-year-old self. Indeed, she has not
begun to feel guilty for “her crime” as the consequences only yet have only just begun this
one bill into place. However, it is an older Briony who writes the story, and McEwan has
allowed some small but weighty narrative intrusions to hint that the novel is not what it
seems. The reference in Chapter 14 to “a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime” draws
attention to Briony's constant need to atone due to her never-ending “guilt” that she cannot
escape from. The religious reference to her guilt paints her suffering as a type of Crusade, a
self-righteous form of “self-torture” that she must finish, even if it will have no effect on her
victims. We will later realise that this is not purely metaphorical – Briony sees her novel as a
“59-year-old assignment,” with the “half a dozen drafts” being new cycles on the rosary of
“eternal” self-torture. Briony’s “earliest draft” of the story is written during her first year of
nurse’s training, in a fashion similar to her “tempest of composition” at the start of the
novel. The length that the novel increases by is significant, showing her insistence to offer
penance, however futile, for the crime she committed. Guilt is significant in Atonement
because it is the primary motivator for the novel's existence in the first place.
Briony's decision to follow in Cecilia’s footsteps of nurse training is also significant. Rather
than “taking her place” at Cambridge as was “expected”, she starts training as a nurse and
begins to distance herself from her family. she chooses “a life of strictures, rules, obedience
[and] housework,” over following her dream of studying literature. A letter from Cecilia in
Part Two mirrors our shock at this news and Briony’s quoted reason that she wants to be
“useful” is evidence of her moral growth just five years on. Cecilia’s reason for disowning her
family is her disgust at their part in condemning an innocent man, and it is likely the same
reason for Briony, highlighting her horror at her crime. However, Briony seems to almost
enjoy the “enveloping regime” for the anonymity, she has “no identity beyond her badge”
and the sheer number of tasks expected of her allow her to be “delivered from
introspection.” Her guilt and shame at her “cowardice” disgusts her and it could be said that
the “atonement” is not purely for her crime of perjury but the inaction that she perpetuated
all throughout her life.
Another aspect of Briony’s remorse is her deep desire for forgiveness. She constantly thinks
of Robbie, evident through the focalized narrative in Part Three, particularly as the fear that
“the war might compound her crime” becomes tangible. As the threat of German invasion
encroaches, so does the reality that Robbie may not survive the war to forgive her, or to live
past his victimhood. Briony longs for an “unstained life”, to have “someone else’s past.” Her
fanciful desire that “one of these men might be Robbie” allows us to see her feelings of
helplessness now that Bobby has been sent to war. She wishes to turn back time and restore
Robbie to his former self “till his familiar features emerged”, but we of course know this can
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