Analysis of Atonement by Ian McEwan

Plot Account

Briony Tallis is a scholarly, pompous 13-year-old who lives in an English country bequest in 1935. Her cousins, 15-year-old Lola Quincey and 9-year-old twins Jackson and Pierrot Quincey, are coming to remain with the Tallises in light of the fact that their folks are entangled in a separation. In the interim, Briony's more seasoned sister Cecilia holds unsettled heartfelt affections for Robbie Turner, the Tallises' grounds-keeper (Robbie's heartfelt affections for Cecilia, in the mean time, are enthusiastically settled). Because of the Tallises' financing, Robbie concentrates with Cecilia at Cambridge and plans to turn into a specialist. From a window of the bequest, Briony observes both of them incidentally break a family treasure container before a wellspring. At the point when Cecilia takes off her garments before Robbie to recover the shards from the wellspring, Briony begins to think Robbie is a danger to her sister. Afterward, Robbie gives Briony a letter of expression of remorse to provide for Cecilia, yet unintentionally gives her an indecent draft all things considered. Briony peruses the letter and becomes persuaded Robbie is a danger. At the point when Robbie understands his mistake, he goes to Cecilia to apologize. This statement of regret goes to energetic lovemaking in the family library. Briony goes into the room and interferes, further establishing her disdain and doubt of Robbie. 

The family assembles for a supper to honor the visit of Leon, the most established Tallis kid. He has brought a companion, Paul Marshall, with him. Paul is the beneficiary to a chocolate fortune. The twins leave the supper table, and leave a letter behind clarifying they have arrived behind schedule from the house since they miss their folks. The visitors amass scan gatherings to search for the young men on the grounds. 

Briony, looking alone, discovers Lola being assaulted in a distant piece of the bequest. The aggressor flees before Briony can recognize him, yet as she supports Lola she persuades both Lola and herself that she saw Robbie perpetrate the wrongdoing. Briony drives Lola back to the house and conveys her story to every one of the grown-ups present. Cops show up and Briony affirms that she saw Robbie perpetrate the wrongdoing. After numerous hours, Robbie gets back to the house with the twins; he had been looking for them alone throughout the evening. At the point when he gets back, he is taken into police guardianship. 

Section Two continues after Robbie has served three and a half years in jail for Lola's attack. During that time, he has been in consistent correspondence with Cecilia, despite the fact that she has not been permitted to visit him face to face. She has cut binds with her family and began a vocation as an attendant. Cecilia's most recent letter educates Robbie that Briony has reached her with expectations of withdrawing the bogus declaration she made years sooner. 

The episode of World War II permits Robbie to end his sentence by enrolling in the military. He goes to battle in France. At the point when Part Two starts, he should stroll to the coast with his confidants Corporal Nettle and Corporal Mace to empty with the British powers. During this walk, the men view upsetting butchery. In spite of having an excruciating shrapnel wound, Robbie makes it to the coast and is emptied. 

Section Three spotlights on Briony, who has predestined school to function as an attendant during the conflict. Work is requesting, and she is threatened by her regulator, Nurse Drummond. An inundation of harmed men from the French departure shows up to the medical clinic, and the nerve racking experience of treating them makes Briony develop. In her uncommon extra energy, Briony composes stories, which she submits to magazines fruitlessly. 

A letter from her dad educates Briony that Paul and Lola are to be hitched. She goes to their wedding and, thereafter, visits Cecilia. Out of the blue, Robbie is available also. The air is tense, however Briony consents to make the strides important to alarm her family and the pertinent lawful specialists of her adjustment of declaration. Cecilia and Robbie see Briony off, and Briony comprehends that after she completes the errands she consented to, she should start a top to bottom interaction of "atonement." 

The book's epilog uncovers that this atonement interaction was to compose the first novel itself. Briony, presently 77, describes in the primary individual. She has recently been determined to have irreversible dementia. She depicts going to a library to give her correspondence with Corporal Nettle—used to compose this book—and a while later goes to a birthday celebration tossed by her enduring family members, including Pierrot and Leon. While Briony aches to distribute her diary, she can't do as such while Paul and Lola stay alive. They are presently all around associated socialites and will without a doubt sue her for criticism. Briony concedes that her novelization has changed a few subtleties—for instance, Robbie and Cecilia both really died in the conflict, yet her fiction permitted them to live—however she mirrors that despite the fact that accomplishing atonement will be unthinkable for her, her endeavor to do so is crucial. 

Atonement Summary

"Atonement" is a book written in three major parts, with a final denouement from the author.

Part One tells the story of one day/night in 1935 at the Tallis family estate north of London, England. It focuses on Briony Tallis, the thirteen-year-old youngest daughter of three, who aspires to be a writer. She has written a play to be performed at dinner for the homecoming of her brother, Leon, and put on by herself and her three cousins who are staying with the Tallises for the summer because of a divorce between their parents. Before the play can be properly rehearsed, Briony witnesses a scene between her older sister Cecilia and the son of the family charwoman Robbie Turner. What is an innocent act is greatly misunderstood by the young imagination, and this sets off a series of events with eternal consequences.

Following the fountain scene, Briony intercepts a letter from Robbie to Cecilia and reads it. In it, she discovers perverse desires and sets out to protect her sister from this sex-craved maniac. Before she can do so, she witnesses the couple making love and mistakes it for assault, further confirming her assumption that Robbie is out to harm Cecilia.

Before the night is through, her twin cousins run away from home triggering the rest of the dinner guests to search for them in the dark night. Briony, who is searching alone, witnesses a rape taking place of her older cousin Lola. Not one to miss her opportunity, Briony convinces everyone at the scene, including authorities, that the assailant was Robbie Turner, and he is taken to jail.

Part Two takes place five years later. It follows Robbie Turner as he retreats through France as a soldier during the war. The reader has learned he served three years in prison for his crime and is now able to exonerate himself by serving in the army. Separated from his battalion, Robbie is marching through the countryside with two other corporals trying to get to the evacuation town of Dunkirk. During his march, Robbie experiences the atrocities of war, and has plenty of time to consider his situation as soldier, criminal, and victim of Briony's false accusations. The three men make it to Dunkirk which is in a state of complete chaos. Robbie is severely wounded but is determined to make it home to Cecilia who is waiting for him.

Part Three picks up the eighteen-year-old Briony who has signed up as a nurse in London. Suffering from guilt for her crime as girl, Briony hopes nursing will act as a penance for her sin. Briony is also still writing. She submits a story to a London journal which is rejected, but in the rejection she is encouraged to develop the story further as it is quite good. When the soldiers return from Dunkirk, Briony experiences the horrors of war first hand, and is humiliated at her failure to perform her duty. At the end of Part Three, Briony seeks out her older sister. Before she does, she attends the wedding of Paul Marshall (whom she knows to be Lola's rapist) and Lola. Briony does nothing to stop the marriage.

When she visits her sister, it is discovered that Robbie is still alive and living with Cecilia. This makes Briony happy to see. She does not so much as ask for forgiveness from the two lovers (who refuse it anyhow) as simply admit her guilt and seek counsel on what she can do to make it better. Robbie and Cecilia give Briony a list of instructions to follow that will help clear Robbie's name. Briony agrees to do each one, and heads back to work in London. The last we see of Robbie and Cecilia are on the tube station platform.

The final section of the boo, London, 1999, is a letter from the author to the reader. It is revealed here that the author is Briony herself. She explains that she was able to write the war parts of the book with the aid of letters form the museum of archives and a pen-pal relationship with one of the corporals with whom Robbie marched. Briony attends a birthday party/family reunion at her old home, the original scene of the crime. She also reveals that she is dying. In a final twist, Briony informs her reader that she has made up the part about visiting Cecilia and Robbie in London and how both people died in the war. Her act to let their love last forever in the pages of her book will be her final atonement to her crime. 

Themes in Atonement by Ian McEwan

The Theme of Deceit

Deceit is a major theme in this story, and it comes across in different ways. First there is the deceit of Lola and Paul Marshall. Although it is not totally explored, Lola must have known the identity of her assailant. Paul had attacked her in the children's room in the Tallis family manor before dinner. Later, he rapes her (or that is what Lola claims). But Paul keeps silent while Robbie is taken to prison. Later Lola and Paul are married, and they never confess their lie.

Briony too is deceitful. One could argue that she is shaken by what she witnessed and could not distinguish the difference between truth and what she imagines. But there are too many circumstances that go against this theory. For one, Briony suffers from guilt. She would not feel guilty if she had not consciously lied.

There is another type of deceit at the end of the novel, when the author twists the story around and insinuates that the so-called true story that he was presenting was actually created by one of his characters, Briony. When Briony tells the readers that this is her novel, she argues that it is her fictionalized creation and she can create any kind of ending that she wants. She can have Cecilia and Robbie die in the war or she can have them live happily ever after. It is the prerogative of the author to decide what is true, in the sense of the story, and what is not. This is the deceit of the fiction writer. 

The Theme of Perspective

The most essential theme of Atonement is the way an individual’s perspective inevitably shapes his or her reality. At various points throughout the novel, McEwan filters the narrative through a particular character’s point of view. By juxtaposing the distinct, and frequently conflicting, ways his characters understand the world, the author illustrates that each individual’s reality is as much a product of their own biases, assumptions, and limited knowledge as it is a reflection of an objective, external truth.

The most powerful and consequential example of perspective influencing reality is Briony’s inaccurate incrimination of Robbie. A long chain of self-centered reasoning leads the young girl to believe that Robbie is responsible for raping Lola. First, her resentment at being excluded from Robbie and Cecilia’s mutual love predisposes her to view Robbie negatively. Later on, her childish imagination leads her to fabricate a sinister backstory to explain why she saw Robbie and Cecilia cavorting semi-clothed in the fountain together. These biases in turn drive her to surreptitiously read the lewd letter Robbie accidentally sends to Cecilia and conclude that the young man is a depraved maniac. Together, these hasty conclusions and unnoticed biases make Briony convince herself that she saw Robbie assault Lola, and attest this misconception to the police. At this point, Briony’s flawed perspective combines with the incomplete perspectives and biases held by authority figures like the police and Mrs. Tallis, and this is all it takes to fabricate a reality in which Robbie is guilty—even though that reality has no basis in actual fact.

However, even though Briony’s biased reality certainly causes the furthest-reaching repercussions, McEwan shows that no character is capable of seeing the world in a truly objective, balanced way. For example, despite being so deeply harmed by others’ hasty judgments, Robbie and Cecilia themselves (snobbishly) assume that the servant Danny Hardman was Lola’s true rapist, even though the facts indicate otherwise. Through this and other shifts in perspective, McEwan illustrates the crucial, yet capricious, role that narrative plays in our individual understandings of truth.

The Theme of Coming of Age

Atonement covers 64 years, which is long enough to do a serious amount of growing up. Everybody who wants to grow up in the book—Lola, who paints her toenails and wears perfume; Briony, who wants to learn all about how adults feel so she can write it down; Robbie, who wants to be free and pursue his own ambitions; Cecilia, who wanders around moping and smoking waiting for her life to start—gets old. Every single one of them—even those who actually died before they had a chance, thanks to Briony's novel.

The Theme of Guilt 

The theme of guilt, forgiveness, and atonement should be extremely obvious to anyone who reads the book. The entire plot of the novel centers on a woman who devotes her entire life repenting a crime she committed while still a young girl.

Articles of note that are not as obvious to the reader that have to do with this theme are things like, is Briony the only person who should feel guilty? Who else is at fault for the crime committed on that hot summer night in 1935? Where is Lola's guilt for not saying anything? What about Paul Marshall's--the real assailant who gets away with rape and stands silent while an innocent man goes to prison. Then there are all the adults in Part One of the novel. How is it that so many people who are capable of understanding so much more than a thirteen-year-old girl come to rely completely on her testimony? Should more not have been done in the investigation?

The question is left open at the end of the book. Does Briony finally achieve her atonement by writing her story and keeping her lovers and allowing their love to survive?

The second layer to the guilt theme has to do with the history of literature. Aside from the crime she committed as a child, Briony feels guilty for her powers as a writer. She knows she has the autonomy to write whatever story she so chooses. Just like she could send Robbie to prison, she can make him survive the war. The reliance readers put in Briony to tell them "what really happened" leaves her feeling guilty about her life's work, and she projects that guilt onto the history of the English literature canon.

The Theme of Class

The tension that drives the book’s early plot is the scandalous love affair between the wealthy, well-bred Cecilia Tallis and the low-class Robbie Turner, the son of one of her family’s servants. Although Robbie has been largely incorporated into the Tallis family, both by growing up alongside the Tallis children and by enjoying a stellar education sponsored by the family, he is nevertheless an outsider. Robbie’s future depends on the charity of the Tallises. His outsider status undeniably contributes to the swift and uncompromising isolation he experiences after Briony accuses him of raping Lola.

McEwan emphasizes that an individual’s social status has little correlation with his or her moral and intellectual worth. The chocolate heir Paul Marshall’s high social status likely allows him to escape suspicion for the crime he committed, and he never acknowledges his misdeed, and in fact even “buys” his way out of trouble by marrying, and thereby making rich, the girl he raped. Meanwhile, low-born Robbie is one of the brightest and kindest characters in the novel. However, while he may be morally and intellectually exceptional, Robbie’s low class does inhibit him from exercising the power to choose his own fate that other, higher-status characters do throughout the novel. Instead, he is left at the mercy of a biased system while other, more morally reprehensible characters go unpunished largely because of their greater social clout. And, further, Robbie is also not immune to class prejudice, as he assumes the even lower class Danny Hardman raped Lola, never imagining that it might have been Paul Marshall who did it. 

The Theme of Compassion and Forgiveness

The name of the book is Atonement, so you know it's a story about trying to get forgiveness for your sins. Those sins are, oddly, mostly about making up stories. And the way you try to get forgiveness is also by making up stories. Briony did wrong by imagining that Robbie raped her cousin. Then she writes a fictionalized novel about how he didn't rape her cousin to atone for it. Paul, on the other hand, doesn't say anything about his own sin from first to last, and doesn't seem to feel the need for forgiveness either. Maybe atonement only works in a story. Just like you can't have a beginning without an end, you can't have forgiveness without a tale that tells you what you did wrong.

The Theme of Innocence

Arguments can be made on where the exact point is that Briony "loses her innocence." There are a few moments in Part One that can be attributed to such a notion: Was it when she saw the scene at the fountain? When she gives up on her play? When she reads the letter from Robbie to Cecilia? When she mistakenly observes Robbie and Cecilia making love in the library? When she witnesses Lola's rape? Or when she officially accuses Robbie of the assault to authorities? Each one of these is a plausible response.

What is certain, however, is that somewhere during Part One of the novel, Briony ceases to exist as a protected child in this world and enters the exposed world of adulthood. The narration of part one, which we learn later to be Briony herself, holds nothing back in informing the reader of this post-awareness. Briony the character is too young to realize it at the time. She is caught in between world's. Look at the moment when the search parties take flight after the twins; Briony debates on whether she is old enough to search herself, or if she should stay back under the protection of her mother. She decides on the former and this decision results in something that forever changes her life and the lives of everyone around her. Even following the arrest of Robbie, Briony yearns for her mother's comfort.

There is a greater loss of innocence at play here as well. War rips the entire country apart, and eventually the world. The bliss is innocence that was being enjoyed by Europe following "the war to end all wars" (WWI) is about to be stripped away in force. This innocence is represented in Leon Tallis, a character who lives for the weekends in London, doesn't think there will be a war, and feels all people are primitively good-natured.

  The Theme of The Unchangeable Past

The most important plot developments in the work stem from actions or experiences that can never be erased or counteracted. Once Briony testifies against Robbie, she takes on a responsibility for Robbie’s fate that she will never be able to shed, and she loses an innocence that she will never be able to regain. No matter what she does to atone for her misdeed, she will not be able to replace the future—love with Cecilia, being a doctor—that she has stolen from Robbie’s life.

Not surprisingly, Briony’s accusation leaves an indelible mark on Robbie, too. As a consequence of his imprisonment, he is unable to continue his prestigious education and must instead enlist in the military. The violence and suffering that Robbie witnesses in the war traumatize him and permanently alter his temperament. Similarly, after Briony works her first shift in the hospital caring for seriously wounded soldiers, she feels as though she has crossed into a new stage of maturity and worldliness from which she can never return.

This theme of irretrievability meshes interestingly with the novel’s theme of individual perspective. In many ways, the most irrevocable changes in the novel come when characters lose the ability to perceive their realities in a certain way. For example, as an aging Briony reflects on her past, she no longer sees the world with the tragically narcissistic perspective she held as a child—and in this way, her new perspective irretrievably reshapes the reality of her life.

The Theme of War

It is not typical to say that "war" is a theme in any book, but it is a very important part of "Atonement" and something that needs to be addressed as a separate component to the overall themes of the book.

Ian McEwan is a known activist against war and as a writer who takes a personal interest in World War Two history. His father was a Major in the British Armed Forces and McEwan grew up in different areas of the world, in Army camps, while his father was serving his duties.

There is an irony that Robbie Turner must fight in the war to exonerate himself from a crime he did not commit. This highlights the injustices of any war. As much as the story is a fictional tale, the scenes that involve the war, both in France in Part Two and in the hospitals in London in Part Three, are historically accurate. In particular, the horrors that the British Army faced as they awaited evacuation on the beaches of Dunkirk and the German planes continued their assault, is captured in extraordinary detail in "Atonement." Also, McEwan acknowledges a book he read in 1977 called "No Time For Romance" written by Lucilla Andrews that was the personal account of a nurse who served in the hospitals in London during the war. Briony's experiences in Part Three are directly inspired from that reading (for more information on this, see "Plagiarism" in the Additional Content of this Note).

There is not too much to be said on it. The two world wars that took place in Europe in the first half of the 20th century are events that changed the course of human history. Ian McEwan's "Atonement" draws focus on the lasting effects these events had on the British psyche in hopes of assisting in the prevention of it from ever happening again Often times, war in literature is presented as horrible, but it at least allows for some exciting plotting. If you're at war, you're doing something. Not so much in Atonement, though. There aren't any battles here—just a messy retreat and people being shot at. War isn't so much a plot itself as an ugly barrier in the middle of the plot. Briony the novelist, like Briony the nurse, ends up having to clean up after the war, bandaging up the story she wants to tell where war has torn it apart. If war gets in the way of people's plans, then maybe it isn't a story itself but something that ruins other stories.

The Theme of Identity

Here is a question to ask: Who is Briony Tallis? Is she a child criminal? A repenting nurse? A writer? All of them? Is she a good person? An evil person?

Any novel that stretches over a sixty-five year period is going to observe the characters go though periods of change and development. But "Atonement" works on a different level when it comes to identity as a theme.

Briony Tallis has the imagination to make herself anything. When the story opens she is Briony the serious child, Briony the famous writer, and Arabella, the star of a play she has just written. Whenever Briony is upset, she wanders by herself to water, where she can daydream into any persona she wishes--a murderer, fencing champion, successful author (notice the water motif for this--a formless element).

In Part Three of the book, Briony has become a nurse, but she is given a badge with an incorrect first initial. She has been completely emasculated by the war and her social condition, as well as her guilt. When she sits with the dying French soldier, he thinks her to be someone else, and she goes along with his fantasy out of pity, but she tells him her real name in the end.

Other characters in the story too suffer identity problems. What is difference between Jackson and Pierrot; Nettles and Mace? The latter cannot determine if Turner is an educated Cambridge boy or a lower-class prisoner like themselves. Even Robbie himself doesn't know what he wants to be--a literature graduate come landscaper who is considering medical school, who has no father.

The confusion of identity points out the confusion of coming into oneself at the golden age of lost innocence as well as what a nation is during war. Cecilia Tallis appears to be the only character who confidently knows her true self. As readers, we even have to question who wrote the book--Briony Tallis or Ian McEwan?

Themes of identity are common in coming-of-age novels. The fact that we get Briony at three distinctive points in her life complicates this overarching investigation into what makes up one's own sense of individuality and how confident that person has become with that outpouring image

The Theme of Sex

There are basically two sex acts in the novel, and they're both really important. The first is when Robbie and Cecilia have their sweetly scandalous encounter in the library, and the second is the even more scandalous but not even a little bit sweet assault of Lola by Paul Marshall. Briony is a witness to both—and misunderstands both completely, to the detriment of everybody (except Paul). You could say sex causes a lot of grief in the book. But really it's more that the stories around sex that Briony (and Lola) only half know are inadequate and messed up. It's not so much sex as what people think about sex that dooms poor Robbie—and lets that jerk Paul get off scot free. (See our "Steaminess Rating" section for more discussion.)  

Analysis of all Characters in  Atonement by Ian McEwan

Briony Tallis 

Character Analysis

Briony is the youngest of the three children of the Tallis Family although she called herself an only child due to the age difference between her and her siblings. She has a passion for writing and a need for perfection. As a child she is very self-centered. She thinks that the world revolves around her and that she understands everything that she sees even though she really doesn’t. This misunderstanding is the basis of the entire plot of Atonement. Briony witnesses a series of events (fountain scene, letter, library, forest) that cause her to believe that Robbie raped Lola. In actuality she misinterpreted everything she saw and accused the wrong person of rape. This resulted in Robbie going to jail, Cecilia disowning her family, and Robbie and Cecilia never being able to see each other again before they both die in the war. Once Briony realizes the gravity of what she has done she tries to atone for her ‘sins’. In the novel she does this by leaving her family to become a nurse (just like Cecilia) and tries to write to Cecilia and get her to talk to her to no avail. She ends up going to see Cecilia at her house and Robbie is there. She explains herself to both of them and they tell her what she can do to ‘atone’. However none of that actually happened, Robbie and Cecilia died before they could see each other again and Briony never talked to either of them after the incident. What Briony does to ‘atone’ instead is write the book which is parts one two and three of the Atonement. She believes that in making ‘her’ lovers live and telling the world that she has done something wrong that she will be forgiven and everything will be okay. There are a few turning point throughout the novel in which you see different parts of Briony’s character. One big point that is made is when Briony question if everyone is really as ‘alive’ as she is but the first big part is when she stops the play and goes to break nettles in the forest because it’s not perfect; this is a perfect example of her need for perfection and her frustration with everyone else who isn’t ‘perfect’. Another   part of her character is shown in the fact that she thinks she’s ‘protecting’ her sister from a ‘maniac’ when in fact she was just ruining them. This is an example of her need to control everything and the fact that she thinks she’s right about everything no matter what. A different component of her character is shown when she describes becoming a nurse. This part shows that she has grow in the past years and that she is not as self-centered anymore but it also shows that she still has the need for perfection when she’s trying to make the wounded soldiers follow procedure.  The last major advancement we see in Briony’s character is when she is talking to the French boy Luc. Here she learns a lot about not only herself but she realizes the severity of war and he makes Briony think about other people’s lives for the first time in a sincere way. Briony’s character is the one that is most advanced throughout the book but this is partly because at the beginning of the book she was much younger than everyone else in the book and started off a lot more naïve and immature. Also, at the end of the book she is elderly and has been diagnosed with dementia which is the reason that she decided to write Atonement in the first place. She didn’t want to forget without ‘atoning’ first and I think that says a lot about her character. Another thing to keep I mind is the fact that Briony wrote the entire book in order to ‘atone’ for what she did. We don’t know how much of Briony we can believe because she might have had an agenda in writing the book. Because of this, it is difficult to know if what she says is true. It’s hard to know what part of what’s written is truth and what part is her portraying herself in a way that would make the reader want to forgive her for what she did. As a whole, Briony’s character grew with the story and helped advance its plot because without her, there would be no misunderstanding.   

Robbie Turner 

The bright, attractive, and ambitious son of Grace Turner, who is the Tallis family’s charlady. Robbie is studying at Cambridge to be a doctor, and his education is funded by the Tallises, who treat him like a son. He is also passionately in love with Cecilia Tallis. However, he is wrongly imprisoned when Briony misidentifies him as the man who raped Lola. After three years in prison, he enlists to fight in World War II in exchange for a reduced sentence. Later in the novel, Briony finds him at Cecilia’s apartment and attempts to make amends, though he is clearly still furious with Briony. Though still later in the novel it is revealed that Briony invented this encounter as a kind of atonement, to give him a life with Cecilia even though he was in fact killed in combat. 

Emily Tallis 

Emily is mother to Briony, Cecilia, and Leon, and wife to Jack Tallis. She is 46 years old in 1935 where the first third of the novel takes place.

She is defined as distant and unfriendly and seems to let the Tallis household be managed by the staff that is employed there. To her defense, Emily is pretty much a single mother--her husband Jack is never around, devoting more of his time to his work in the Whitehall ministry than to his family.

Emily suffers from severe migraines, an illness that began after the birth of her youngest child Briony. She was educated at home by herself until she was 16, then she was sent to Switzerland to boarding school. Her view about woman and class in society is traditional. She feels woman are subservient to men and social classes should not mix romantically. 

Cecilia Tallis 

Cecilia Tallis, Briony's older sister, totally doesn't know what she's doing. She comes back from college in 1935 and she flops and mopes and smokes around the house like some sort of morbid adolescent. Her brother asks her to come up to London with her, and she hems and haws and burbles. She switches dresses three times before going down to dinner. When her mother tells her to put some flowers in a vase, she takes all day about it

Emily has a special maternal instinct for her youngest daughter, Briony, and it is said that she "loves to love her" and "protects her against failure" (62). Overall, she is described as having a maternal "sixth sense [and] tentacular awareness" for her children and her household. There is a complete and in-depth description of Emily Tallis given at the beginning of Chapter 6.

And then she breaks the vase when she has an argument with her childhood friend Robbie Turner.

And then she's so mad at him that she takes off her clothes and dives into the fountain to retrieve the broken pieces of the vase. "Drowning herself would be his punishment" (1.2.54)!

Wait… what was that last bit again? She's mad at him… so she takes her clothes off? Yeesh. Kids those days. 

In Love Probably most of you can figure out where this is going: Cecilia doesn't know what she's doing because she's got one very particular thing she's not telling herself. That thing, as you've probably guessed by now, is that she's head over heels in love with her childhood friend Robbie Turner. Hence the not leaving home for London, the moping around the house, the stripping off her clothes to jump in the fountain. Luckily, Robbie's behaving a little erratically as well, and he accidentally sends her a note that he meant to destroy because he mentions some of his X-rated fantasies concerning her. Cecilia responds not with horror, but by suddenly realizing that she's got those X-rated fantasies herself. "…how could I have been so ignorant about myself? And so stupid?" (1.11.61) she asks herself. We were kind of wondering the same thing.

The answer's simple enough: love makes you stupid sometimes. And for what it's worth, once Cecilia figures everything out, she doesn't hesitate at all. One page the light bulb goes on, the next she's pulling Robbie into the library for a steamy make-out session and repeating after him "the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can ever quite cheapen" (1.11.66).

Happiness ensues! And The Sad Bit Of course, happiness does not ensue. Instead, Cecilia has no sooner figured out what she wants to do with her life than that life is destroyed. Robbie is accused of raping Lola and dragged off to prison… and that's that. Her life begins and ends within a matter of hours. It's pretty tragic.

The rest of Cecilia's story is a long epilogue. After the first section of the novel, we never get to hear Cecilia's thoughts again—we're never in her consciousness. We see her only through Robbie's memories of her letters or through Briony's eyes. We know she breaks with her family for their role in prosecuting Robbie. We know she becomes a nurse, and through Briony we see something of her confidence and her bitterness about this role. We know she never forgets Robbie, and we know that when he was taken away by the police she said, "I'll wait for you," and that she signed her letters the same way (2.180). Importantly, we also know that she follows through on her promise and waits. But we never really find out what that waiting feels like. It's as if Briony, who we learn is the writer of the novel, couldn't bear to peep inside her sister's head. She couldn't make herself see what exactly became of that girl who didn't know herself well and, once she finally did, promptly watched that self disappear.

Lola Quincey 

Like her mother, Hermione Quincey, Lola is conniving and used to getting her way. Although she only 15 years old, she attracts the attention of the much older Paul Marshall, who attacks and rapes her. Despite his violence, however, Lola fancies herself in love with him, and is relieved to have Robbie as a convenient scapegoat for Paul's crime. She allows an eager Briony to speak for her. Later, she marries Paul and becomes Lady Marshall—a socialite and philanthropist

Paul Marshall 

A somewhat dull friend of Leon’s who is heir to a chocolate-making fortune. His family company manufactures Amo bars. When he visits the Tallis family at the beginning of the book, the family initially imagines that he might be a good match for Cecilia. She is uninterested in him, however, and he notices Lola’s good looks even though she is fifteen years old. Paul rapes Lola but lets the blame fall upon Robbie. Later, he marries Lola—which, it is implied, is a kind of deal that gains Lola’s allegiance despite his rape of her by making her wealthy and allowing them both to hide their role’s in Robbie’s false indictment. He eventually becomes a philanthropist and fixture of London high society. 

Jackson and Pierrot Quincey 

Jackson and Pierrot are Lola Quincey's younger twin brothers. They are 9 years old when they arrive at the Tallis home for the summer, and are at a complete loss with their situation and what is happening between their two parents, Hermione and Cecil Quincey.

Forced to act in Briony's play, the twins are at first disagreeable. Soon thereafter, they come around and realize the play is the only thing they like about their new predicament. Looking similar to their older sister, ginger haired and freckled, the boys torture Lola and blame her for being stuck at the Tallis's for the summer.

During a dinner when they learn the play is not going to be performed, the two twins decide to run away, leaving a note left behind on their dining room chair. This act triggers panic and a search party into the countryside night that leads to the opportunity for the crime of rape to be committed.

The boys are eventually found alive and returned to the Tallis home by Robbie Turner. We don't hear about them again until the final chapter when Pierrot is overcome with emotion at the playing of The Tales of Arabella sixty-four years after that fateful night. We learn that Jackson dies in 1984, but both boys grew up to have very large families, as it is mostly Quincey grandchildren and great grandchildren who are there to celebrate Briony's 70th birthday. 

Settings of  Atonement 

The novel is set in the United Kingdom and France in 1935, mid-WWII, and 1999. It is divided into four parts. The first is set in at a country estate where Briony Tallis, the protagonist, lives. The second and third parts are set in World War Two France and the UK. The third part is set in London in 1999 

Symbols in  Atonement 

Uncle Clem’s Vase 

Symbol Analysis

This Tallis family heirloom was given to Jack Tallis’s brother Clem to commemorate Clem’s liberation of a village near Verdun in World War I. Early in the book, while Cecilia and Robbie flirt, they accidentally damage the vase. Cecilia disrobes and goes into a fountain to retrieve the broken piece, and Briony witnesses this event and understands it to signify that Robbie has mistreated her sister. This misunderstanding, along with others, forms the basis for Briony’s notion that Robbie is guilty of raping Lola. In this way, the accidental destruction of a Tallis family heirloom leads to a major rupture in the Tallis family itself, and the token won in World War I that honors the family leads to the breaking apart of the family in World War II

Dresses 

Dresses are closely related to the coming-of-age theme because they reflect the perceived maturity level of the wearer. Briony notes at their second play rehearsal that her white muslin dress is childish compared to Lola's more adult sweater and trousers look, but that she did not want to make the effort to appear older. While dressing for dinner, Cecilia rejects a dour black dress she thinks makes her look beyond her sexual prime and a frilly pink dress she thinks makes her look like a child. She chooses a backless green dress, signaling her availability to Robbie Turner. Lola Quincey wears a constricting dress that Briony muses Lola chose because "attaining adulthood was all about the eager acceptance of such impediments." The constricting dress is also a symbol for the trap Lola falls into with Paul Marshall. Once she keeps her silence about his culpability, she is bound to him and their lie forever. Finally, at her 77th birthday party, Briony chooses a dove-gray, cashmere dress to symbolize she is finally comfortable and at peace with her story—she has "grown up" emotionally enough to accept what she has done.

Water 

Water is a symbol of life and rebirth throughout Atonement. When Cecilia jumps into the fountain, she is reborn as an object of affection in Robbie's eyes. During the war, Robbie is constantly searching for water to keep him alive. The sea he is walking toward is a symbol of his hope for survival and reunion with Cecilia. Briony often goes to bodies of water to revive herself when she is in a bad mood. But in Part 3, stinging cold tap water punishes her a dozen times a day when she must wash her hands as a nurse at the hospital. Her friend Fiona brings Briony a symbolic offer of water, but Fiona is incapable of taking Briony's guilt away. While on her imagined visit to Cecilia, Briony wishes her sister would give her a glass of water—here a symbol of a rebirth into Cecilia's good graces—but Celia does not. 

The Trials of Arabella 

Symbol Analysis

The Trials of Arabella is the title of the play that Briony composes at the beginning of the novel and imperiously directs Lola, Jackson, and Pierrot to perform with her. At the end of the book, a new generation of Briony’s family performs the play to commemorate Briony’s 70th birthday. Because Briony authors and appears in The Trials of Arabella in much the same way that she authors and appears in the book as a whole, The Trials of Arabella serves as a synecdoche—a part of a thing that represents that thing as a whole—for the larger book that contains it. The play’s reappearance within different contexts of the narrative illustrates the way that Briony’s role is beyond her control, even when she herself has authored the part she plays. It is also worth noting that the Trials of Arabella also mimics the actual story of Atonement, as it tells the story of a heroine and her doctor, which matches up with the story of Cecilia and Robbie. And just as in the Trials of Arabella, in writing the story of Cecilia and Robbie the author, Briony, insists on giving her protagonists a happy ending. And yet the ways that Briony’s play don’t match up with reality—in the play it is Briony as Arabella who ends up with the doctor, Robbie in actuality doesn’t end up actually a doctor, the happy ending does not resolve all their misfortune or anger at Briony herself—create a kind of resonance that illustrates both how people both grow while staying in some ways the same, and how literature both can and can’t capture and affect the real world.