Themes+in+'Atonement'


 * __ATONEMENT THEMES__**
 * Love
 * War
 * Guilt and Atonement
 * Writing and the Imagination
 * Truth and Memory


 * //__LOVE__//**

Briony's family is largly disfunctional. Although her mother no doubt loves her it is an ineffectual love, never visably resulting in any benefit or care. Cecilia is more of a mother figure than Emily Tallis ever could be.

Briony and Cecilia love each other, however this love is destroyed after Briony's accusation of Robbie.

Paul Marshall and Lola's relationship cannot be viewed as love so much as an infatuation. Lola is fascinated by this charming older man, whereas Paul is pervertedly attraced to Lola due to her resemblance of his favourite sister.

The only true love left in the novel is between Cecilia and Robbie. It is here that we see a love which despite numerous trials, can not be changed, altered or destroyed. It is Cecilia's love for Robbie which keeps him alive in Prison and while at war in France. For Robbie there is no other choice. Without Cecilia he would collapse or go mad. Cecilia seems to realise this and repeatedly tells him "come back to me".

This relationship not only shows the power of true love it portrays the awkwardness and incertainty felt when beginning a relationship. The change in Cecilia and Robbie's relationship from friends to lovers is somewhat turbulant. It is plagued with misunderstandings, unspoken thoughts and repressed emotions. For example the vase scene, Robbie's letter, and being interrupted in the library by Briony and Robbies arrest.

Robbie and Cecilia overcome all these obstacles. Cecilia waits 3 years just to see Robbie again. He was allowed no female visitors apart from his mother while in prison. They meet briefly before he is sent away to France.

Readers believe for a time that Robbie survived the war and reunited with Cecilia after returning to England. In fact both of them were killed tragically. Robbie from blood poisoning after suffering a schrapnel wound, and Cecilia drowned. London was bombed and she was hiding in the underground when a watermain burst.

Briony acknowledges at the end of the novel that it is unbearable that such love should not find a happy ending. She vows to give them one as she can not return them to life. Her novel is a testament to their love. She believes that it will immortalise their love when their lives would otherwise be forgotten. It is Briony's tribute and atonement for her actions. Her final act of love for her sister and Robbie.


 * //__WAR__//**

The Second World War is a presence throughout the novel, particularly in Parts Two and Three. In Part One, the war is impending and casts its shadow over the action. It makes itself felt in the Tallis household through Jack's war work and Paul Marshall's hopes to cash in on any conflict by selling a camouflage version of Amo bars.

World War One is also referred to in terms of the disappearance of Robbie's father, whom Grace likes to think died in the rather rather than simply ran off. It also has a mention in Part Two when Robbie meets an old woman who has lost her wits. She lost her son in the previous war and never recovered. Her sons are also confused at the return of the German Army and the English retreat. They mourn the loss of life in the previous war and the fact that it was in vain.

"All that fighting we did twenty-five years ago. All those dead. Now the Germans back in France...taking everything we have" (201)

Thus we see the lasting effects of the previous war even as the Second World War is just starting.

The depiction of the war in Part Two and Three really points out the horrors of war and the injuries suffered by both soldiers and cilivilians. Paul Marshall's plan to profit from the war looks particularly repellant when we see the suffering that has formed the foundation of his wealth.

Part Two particularly shows war from the point of view of soldiers at the front. The experiences of Robbie, Nettle and Mace range from discomfort to agony. Robbie and his fellow soldiers are disabled by blisters and bleeding feet, by exhaustion, hunger, thirst and aching wounds. Robbie particularly ponders the pain and destruction and that humans are capable of inflicting on each other.

He describes the graphic images he sees during his journey across France. Particularly shocking is the description of a child's leg in a tree.

"The leg was twenty feet up...severed cleanly above the knee...pale, smooth, small enough to be a child's...it seemed to be on display" (192)

Robbie particularly ponders the pain and destruction and that humans are capable of inflicting on each other.

He wonders at: "the indifference with which men could lob shells into a landscape. Or empty their bomb bays over a sleeping cottage...without knowing or caring who was there. It was an industrial process...they need never see the end result." (202)

This section highlights the terrible violence of war and casually comitted atrocities. It helps show that during war even the most moral of people can commit crimes or acts of violences which transgress all human decency. Robbie also contemplates his guilt at not helping enough people and the fragility of human life. This is shown when after surving a bombing Robbie and his friends are almost killed by a rogue swarm of bees.

"You killed no one today? But how many did you leave to die?" (261)

Back home in London Briony's experience as a war nurse is used to highlight the effect on the people who have to clean up this mess. Briony's detailed depiction of her duties and patients gives readers an intimate look at the wounds sustained by soldiers during the war. An example of this is the yound Frenchman who has had his skull half blown away. Briony removes his dressing as he explains the bandages are too tight. This reveals to her his exposed brain. He later dies while embracing Briony.

Briony's experiences are symbolic of those all nurses dealt with during the war. She shows the agony of being a war time nurse and the emotional cost is has on them. Their innocence, optimism and youth is lost to the war. Briony's character changes considerably during this time to the point where there is little left of the young intense 13 year old introduced to us in Part 1.

No part of society is left untouched, and no character in the novel remains unaffected by the war. In this novel war is largely about destruction and waste but also about guilt. Its effects are not limited to its direct participants such as soldiers and nurses. The whole of society is guilty of allowing the war to happen, allowing the type of suffering we witness in Northern France and the London hospital. The whole of society loses out to the war - from the civilians killed in air raids or losing their livelihoods to invading enemy troops to the young women who lose their youth and optimism to the gruesome task of nursing the wounded. The war has lasting and wide-ranging social effects.


 * //__GUILT AND ATONEMENT__//**

There are two crimes at the centre of 'Atonement': The attack on Lola, and Briony's act of bearing false witness. Only the second is of interest. The rape is a shadowy event, never clearly seen or investigated, and its consequences for Lola and Paul barely explored.

Briony's writing of the novel again and again is her act of atonement for her false accusation of Robbie. Her action wreaks the lives of Robbie and Cecilia, and for this Briony faces a lifetime of guilt. But how culpable is she? In her defence are her youth, her innocent (though foolish) motives and the lack of real opportunity she had to retract her evidence once the adults had begun to act on her original statement.

Briony is not the only person who is guilty. Most obviously, Paul Marshall is guilty. Lola is guilty too, in remaining silent about who attacked her. Lola finds in Briony's certainty a chance to escape the humiliation and difficulty of accusing Paul (or accounting for herself as a willing partner). Lola and Paul let Robbie bear the punishment for Paul's crime and are more culpable than Briony - she at least beleives he is guilty while they know he is not. It is possible that Lola and Paul try to atone through their acts of charity.

Briony's family and the Police must also bear some of the guilt. The people who know her should recognise that her love of drama and her need to be the center of attention make it very difficult for her to relinquish the position she has won by her certainty. Yet Briony cannot be absolved of all responsibility. When given the clearest chance early on to change her evidence she refuses. The police officer tells her to disregard what she knows and think of only what she saw. Briony states: "I know it was him...Yes I saw him. I saw him" (181).

Thus cementing her guilt.

//Guilt is also evident in other parts of the novel.//

- Robbie and the guilt he feels for the people he has not saved, the dead he has not buried. "You killed no one today? But how many did you leave to die?" (261)

- Guilt of society for letting the war happen "What was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was...the witnesses were guilty too" (261)

- Emily is guilty of neglecting Briony

- Cecilia of breaking the vase and Betty later being blamed for it


 * //__IMAGINATION AND WRITING__//**

The novel is primarily about the making of a writer. Briony's earliest attempts at fiction are the moralistic tales she writes as a small child. It is when she witnesses Cecilia and Robbie at the fountain that the possiblity of more sophisticated writing opens up for her. It is a moment of imaginative awakening, and a rite of passage. She feels as though she has had insight into the grown up world and can no longer go back to the naive stories of fairy-tale castles and princesses.

"it could no longer be fairy-tale castles and princesses, but the strangeness of the here and now, of what passed between people, the ordinary people that she knew...." (39)

Briony is still very much a writer in training. She wants order, a moral message and a pleasing logic in a narrative and does not consider unruly reality to be a suitable subject matter.

By the end of the story Briony is a successful novelist and has written critically acclaimed works. But she writes and rewrites this one story throughout her life. It is the story that really matters to her, and the one she must make sense of on order to make sense of her own life.

Writing this particular novel is Briony's atonement for destroying the lives of both her sister Cecilia and Robbie. The reason behind her guilt is the lie she told as a result of her overactive imagination and desire for events to fit neatly. The mundane truth of what Briony sees at the fountain (an argument) is not nearly as interesting or dramatic a story as the one where she casts Robbie as a sex maniac. Briony changes and alters reality to fit her plot. When she reads Robbie's obscene note to Cecilia and later catches him "attacking" her in the library, this only adds to her conviction that Robbie is an evil and dangerous villain.

Her overdramitising of these events ultimately causes Briony to assume that the only possible person capable of attacking Lola is Robbie. She does not see Robbie attack Lola but believes it was him. Briony cannot see the truth of the situation, that Robbie is her friend and not capable of such a crime. She sees only what fits into her own little story and what is most interesting or dramatic. She has no concept of the consequences of her actions.

Briony fails to grasp that Cecilia and Robbie are more than just material for her writing; her imagination fails her and them as she cannot see what she is doing to real people. This particular event is crucial in the novel. It raises the question of the danger of imagination. Can someone get so caught up in their own fantasies that they lose touch with reality and hurt those around them that they love?

For Briony this is certainly true.

//**__TRUTH AND MEMORY__**//

This theme deals largely with the idea that truth and memory are two seperate ideas. A memory is remembered and therefore subject to change over time - memories cannot be relied upon as truth.

The main action that deals with truth is the accusation of Robbie by Briony. Briony beleives Robbie to be guilty of raping Lola however it is not the truth. It is the truth however that at the time Briony beleived he did. She later finds out otherwise but by that time is too late to make up for her mistake. At the time she is too imature lacks the ability to seperate fact from fiction.

Lola and Paul are undeniably untruthful in that they let Robbie take the blame for their selfish actions. Each has a motive for remaining silent about the truth. Lola would be named a harlot who encourage Paul to take advantage of her. She would have been an outcast in a society that considered sex before marriage an absolute sin. Paul would also have been looked down upon for taking advantage of a young and unmarried girl - particularly ungentlemanlike behaviour.

Another interesting aspect that comes up in the novel is the fact that the older Briony reveals she has Vascular Dementia. This is a degenerative disease which gradually causes the sufferer to lose memory, vocabulary and other mental faculties. This is a particularly cruel fate for Briony but one which she states she almost looks forward too - perhaps so that she will no longer remember the guilt she feels for destroying Robbie and Cecilia's lives. It also raises the question of Briony's reliability as a story teller.

'Atonement' is Briony's account of all the events from 1935 onwards. Briony's disease casts doubt over how much of these events she actually remembers and how accurately?

One other aspect of Truth which is present in the story is the reality of what happened to Robbie and Cecilia. In Briony's story they lead a reasonably happy life after the war and settle down in their own little apartment in Balham. Robbie is badly scarred by the war but at least they have each other. In the epilogue readers learn that this in indeed another of Briony's fictional embelishments. She chose to give the lovers the life they wanted but never had as Robbie and Cecilia were both killed during the war.

This also raises the question as to whether the truth is always what people want to hear. Would readers have been more content in their naive assumption that Robbie and Cecilia lived happily ever after or in the harsh reality of their deaths?