AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE CRIME WRITING ESSAY 2020 Atonement – Ian McEwan ‘In Atonement McEwan shows criminals to be products of the society'
Atonement Essay – Ian McEwan ‘Briony is just as much a victim of her own crime as Robbie Turner is.
AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE B - CRIME WRITING ATONEMENT NOTES - Ideas
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English Literature B
Elements of Crime Writing
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'In crime writing some of the innocent always
suffer.ʼ
In crime writing some of the innocent always suffer.ʼ
Atonement
BRIONY AND PAUL MARSHALL GETTING AWAY WITH THEIR CRIMES – NO PUNISHMENT
ROBBIEʼS INNOCENCE BEING CORRUPTED IN DUNKIRK AND HIS SUFFERING
In crime fiction, the concept of innocence is closely correlated with suffering due to the
fundamental premise of a crime being a corruption of innocence. Yet the link between
innocence and suffering suggests that only the innocents in crime writing are able to suffer. In
this essay I will therefore discuss to what extent ‘some of the innocent always sufferʼ in
Atonement and Browning, Wildeʼs poems from the poetry anthology.
In ‘Atonementʼ by Ian McEwan, the reader is presented with a much more post-modernist
interpretation of crime where the previous Golden Age significance of restoring natural order,
allowing the innocence of the setting to be returned is subverted entirely. Instead, by the
London 1999, chapter of the novel we are presented with a society where the extent at which
the innocents suffer can be see through the way in which the criminals succeed. This can be
seen as Briony alludes the character of Paul Marshall to the expensive and luxurious
commodities of a “Black Rolls” and ironically states that the Marshallʼs had been “defending
their good names with a most expensive ferocity” for many years. The adjective “good” reflects
the complete lack of punishment or reparations that the couple had to pay for their crime in
1935, instead they appear to have escaped any stain of their name which is still viewed as
“good”. Similarly, Briony is not exempt from the lack of suffering for her crimes – at least upon
surface level. It is revealed that she went to Cambridge and ultimately became a successful
author reflecting how the criminals in Atonement do not suffer the way in which the ‘innocentʼ
victims do. Cecilia is revealed to have been “killed in September of the same year the bomb
destroyed Balham Underground”, while Robbie “died of Septicaemia at Bray Dunes”. The couple
was separated from each other and further suffered in their lack of reuniting which Briony only
sought out to craft into a work of fantasy. Through this it can be seen that the innocents suffer
while criminals are almost rewarded by society.
As Brionyʼs false confession and the Marshallʼs silence sends the innocent Robbie to an early
death in Dunkirk with the look of “eternal damnation” it becomes clear that the novel takes on a
realistic tone where the innocents suffer without comeuppance for their crimes. Yet, it can be
argued that even Robbie may not be completely innocent. In the setting of Dunkirk which seems
a lawless place far from the Tallis home where the word “cunt” was an obscenity, morals appear
to have been removed. The impending narrators voice numerous times alludes to Robbieʼs
possible alternatives or ‘things he could have do better to help othersʼ although to the reader it
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