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Dark Humour in 'Atonement' Notes
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Here are some notes I made about McEwan's use of dark humour in 'Atonement' and the significance of this.
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How does McEwan use the idea of the macabre to create a comic relief feel to the scene?McEwan uses dark humour as a way of providing comic relief for the reader. The detailed
description has been focused on the war and its impact on soldiers and civilians.
Furthermore, there seems to be an emphasis on the horrific images that show some of the
casualties have been children. For example, ‘the leg’ in the tree seems to belong to that of a
child. When Robbie glimpses ‘Mace’s head on the grass by a pile of dirt’, the reader seems
to think that the head is no longer connected to the body. However, subsequently, the
reader is able to discover that Mace is concealed and digging a grave. Many texts that deal
with the theme of war use macabre humour as a way of exploring and providing relief for
unrelenting, exhausting horror.
In considering the crime of Briony, McEwan uses the context of the Second World War to
reflect upon the crime of war. Through using the duality of war contrasted against innocent
civilians, McEwan uses the implication of the fascist mindset. Michael Foucault reveals that
there is ‘fascism in all of us’ and the patterns of order and symmetry explore this notion.
Therefore, throughout the description of war-torn France, the chaos is revealed, once the
reader has discovered that the unreliable narrator is Briony. The reader can discover that
the supposed account of Robbie’s struggle is presented through the words of Briony.
Perhaps, the tale can be an allegorical account into the warped, distorted mind of Briony.
Furthermore, through the presentation of the minor characters, McEwan utilises the
soldiers, Mace and Nettle, to show how the soldiers attempted to alleviate the mental
trauma created through the horrific sights that they encountered. McEwan utilises bathos to
add to the macabre of the scene and to humanise the characters of Robbie, Mace and
Nettle capturing how soldiers used comic relief to subsist during the war. Robbie uses
sophisticated lexis throughout the scene capturing his class and intellectual upbringing,
‘Divagation was nice’. However, Nettle responds to Robbie seems to cultivate a sense of
comic relief when he comments, ‘He swallowed a fucking dictionary’. The almost
oxymoronic noun phrase, ‘fucking dictionary’ combined with the taboo term ‘fucking’,
illustrates Nettle’s pure frustration at the situation whilst eliciting humour to make the
tragic burial of the child easier for the soldiers to deal with. Furthermore, the exchanges and
companionship between the soldiers seems to help to cope with the horrific and disturbing
sights that they had witnessed throughout the war. Additionally, the fact that the soldiers
refer to the ‘crossword’ during the burial of a boy seems to elicit a sense of comedy. This
bathos seems to alleviate the tension and horrors as a result of the war capturing what war-
life was like for soldiers. McEwan interlaces tragedy with the comic moments of the scene to
provide a sense of release highlighting the reality of war for soldiers.
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