Essay
A* Atonement Exemplar Essay 4
To what extent do you agree with the view that Briony deserves her punishment for the crime she commits?
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Content preview
Atonement practice essay 3To what extent do you agree with the view that Briony deserves her punishment for the
crime she commits?
Plan
1. YES; Robbie's life ruined by her crime, she is culpable by the law, arguably
despicable motivations 'maniac', 'It was Robbie wasn't it', 'together they faced
real terrors' horrible with Lola
2. NO; or were they honourable motivations, to 'save her sister', to achieve literary
order, lack of parental guidance, child in an adult world, no one allowed her to
turn back
3. YES; she herself believes she is guilty, spends her entire life trying to atone,
retrospective voice in Part One, elevates Robbie as the victim in Part Two
4. NO; she's too hard on herself, does her atonement not make her mental
punishment (vascular dementia) at the end unjust, bravery as a nurse
(answering 'Yes' to Luc's 'do you love me?), remorse changes our view of
criminals
5. YES; she's cowardly not going to see Cecilia, she lives a long life of wealth and
success as a novelist, ends with her ineffectual family, crime against the reader at
the end
6. NO; Paul Marshall really deserves punishment yet he escapes justice, he has no
remorse, it's his crime which allowed Briony's to occur (and Lola's), he had the
sole opportunity to save Robbie (at least Briony thought she was truthful)
Response
For many readers of Atonement, it is difficult to sympathise with Briony and
subsequently forgive her for the terrible crime she committed against Robbie and
Cecilia, despite her lifelong remorse. It is often considered therefore that the self-
punishment she inflicts upon herself is proportional to her crime, which was arguably
motivated by malicious intentions to incriminate Robbie. Nevertheless, it is equally true
that Paul Marshall's assault of Lola helped make Briony's transgression possible, and
subsequently some readers may believe that the protagonist's punishment is too severe
compared with Marshall's punishment, which is negated by McEwan in his classically
'macabre' style.
To comprehend the scale of Briony's crime, it is necessary to understand the
effects on Atonement's principal victim, Robbie. At the close of Part One, we are offered
the tragic image of Grace Turner shouting 'Liars! Liars!' to the those who have
condemned the son whom she will never see again - McEwan's use of repetition and the
exclamatives here emphasises the crime that is the false accusation which will come to
ruin Robbie's life forever. The omniscient voice which pervades Part One remarks
bluntly on the way that this one evening has been a form of 'eternal damnation' for
Robbie, with the adjective 'eternal' conveying the powerful message that his fortune will
never reverse, a sentiment which comes to dominate the next two parts. The exploration
of the way in which the life can be destroyed in just one short moment is a common
theme in McEwan's novels such as The Child in Time, in which the protagonist looks
away from his child for one second before she is gone forever. Robbie's similar
destruction can be attributed almost entirely to Briony; her series of misunderstandings
leads her to repeatedly and increasingly brand Robbie as a 'maniac', a single common
noun which ultimately has terrible consequences for his life as it is what perhaps
motivates Briony above all to incriminate him. This motive is arguably somewhat
malicious due to the very fact that the word only appeals to Briony because she believes
it has literary 'refinement', and so she is too self-centred to look beyond her own 'love of
order' to imagine Robbie's own thoughts and feelings. Imaganing another's
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