Next

If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique when no one was.

This passage takes place in Part One of Atonement, when Briony ponders whether she is the only truly unique and sentient mind in the world, or if everyone’s experience of living and thinking is as deep as hers. While the story of Atonement is, in many ways, a very intimate novel that focuses on the effect of a single mistake on a small group of people, it is also an exploration of the inherent chaos of a world peopled by sentient intelligent beings. In this passage, Briony expresses that she is overwhelmed at the idea of a social world infinitely complicated by each person’s unique perspectives, desires, biases, and emotions, as, in such a world, we have very little control over the arc of our lives and the ways we are perceived by others. Additionally, there is something depressing about believing ourselves to be unique when, in reality, everyone else’s minds and experiences are just as vivid as our own. Briony reflects that, if it really is the case that everyone is as sentient as she is, then the social world is one large and confusing competition between countless brains, all striving to write the true narrative of the world, all striving for their perspective to be seen as the correct or winning one.

Briony soon realizes how her own individual perspective and bias have the power to override and ruin the life of another. Briony is an intelligent child, but she does not yet have the ability to truly empathize with others or to view the world from a nuanced perspective. When she accuses Robbie of rape, she does so with full confidence in her own perspective, in the narrative she has written. In adulthood, she begins to understand the world’s complexities, but it is too late for her to fix the damage she caused. This passage is particularly profound because, while it certainly relates to Briony’s specific circumstances, it is also an apt description of the complications that every person, family, and community faces as we attempt—or don’t attempt—to escape the constraints of our individual minds and try to understand the experiences of others. When we zoom out, we see that the entire world is riddled with endless examples of misunderstandings and mistakes similar to Briony’s.

The self-contained world she had drawn with clear and perfect lines had been defaced with the scribble of other minds, other needs; and time itself, so easily sectioned onto paper in acts and scenes, was even now dribbling uncontrollably away.

This quote appears in the novel’s first part, when Briony is frustrated by her cousins’ inability to bring her play to life in the way that she envisioned it. Briony soon comes to realize that she prefers novel writing to playwriting, as the latter requires other people to be involved with the art, and other people are liable to corrupt the original vision. Lola and the twins aren’t very convincing actors, and Briony grows tired of the directorial power struggle between her and her older cousin. Thus, she abandons the play and turns instead to the novel—the solitary form. In her novels and short stories, Briony controls every aspect of both the creation process and the final product. Additionally, this form allows her to observe the adult world around her, such as Robbie and Cecilia’s interaction by the fountain, and decide for herself the facts and truths of this world. Whatever Briony writes becomes the truth, as she fits the world inside parameters of her own making. There is no collaborator or competitor who can contest her.

Briony’s distaste for the corrupting influence of other minds on her carefully constructed narratives foreshadows how and why she so badly misinterprets Robbie and Cecilia’s relationship. Briony wants sole control over the creation of her stories—Robbie and Cecilia’s motives and emotions do not factor in Briony’s construction of her narrative. While this behavioral trait makes Briony a talented writer, it also causes her to fail to take into consideration the nuances of lives and relationships beyond her own. In the world beyond writing, this is a flaw that can have serious consequences, as it does for Robbie, Cecilia, and Lola. When Briony observes the behavior of these three people, she creates meaning out of the circumstances that makes sense to her, crafting a narrative of villainy and victimhood. For Briony, who is used to being the all-knowing god of her inner creative world, it doesn’t cross her mind that the story she has crafted about Robbie, Cecilia, and Lola may not be true.

It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.

This passage occurs in the novel’s first part, as Briony reflects on the fact that everyone in the world has a mind as unique as hers, and that our inability to understand other people’s unique experiences causes unhappiness. Ironically, Briony has this wise realization before she makes her fateful mistake of misunderstanding Robbie and Cecilia’s relationship. A black-and-white worldview would dictate that people who are evil do evil things, and people who are good do good things. However, Briony herself is neither malicious nor cruel, and yet she commits a crime that ruins the lives of its victims. What caused Briony to commit this crime was not “wickedness and scheming”—it was misunderstanding. It was her inability to see the world and human behavior from a perspective that was not her own, and her inability to see Robbie as a real person rather than a constructed character in her own story.

Misunderstandings abound in Atonement, as they do in the real world. It is not only Briony who does something morally wicked due to an innocent mistake. Jack and Emily Tallis misunderstand each other greatly: while Emily believes that Jack’s infidelity is not a threat to their marriage but rather a phase that will eventually end, Jack drifts further from his family and eventually divorces his wife. Cecilia sees that Danny Hardman is sexually interested in Lola and brands him a predator; despite what happened to Robbie, both he and Cecilia uphold the narrative that lower-class employees are a threat to their upper-class employers by insisting that Danny is the rapist. None of these misunderstandings come from a malicious or unrighteous place—like Briony, Robbie and Cecilia truly believe they have identified the rapist. Jack Tallis does not want to hurt his wife and family or damage his reputation, so he fails to communicate his true feelings and leads Emily to believe that their marriage is safe. A lot of these confusions and mistakes stem from characters being too wrapped up in their own minds and experiences to consider that they may be fundamentally misunderstanding the perspectives and motives of other people.

Whatever skivvying or humble nursing she did, and however well or hard she did it, whatever illumination in tutorial she had relinquished, or lifetime moment on a college lawn, she would never undo the damage. She was unforgivable.

In Part Three of Atonement, Briony describes her new life as a wartime nurse, a job she has taken up in the hopes that good works may absolve her of guilt. Even before the hospital receives its first intake of severely injured soldiers, the work is difficult. Briony explains that training to be a nurse involves a process of breaking down and discarding your identity, and redefining yourself as one part of a great sisterhood of nurses, devoted entirely to the craft of medicine and saving lives. Not only does she give up her passion for writing for the time being, but she also takes on physically laborious and painful work. Her hands are covered in blisters, she dumps and cleans trays of feces, and she’s on her feet for long shifts every day. All this discomfort is part of her penance for what she did to Robbie. Yet, despite her suffering and the good service she is doing, she knows that it will not earn her forgiveness from Robbie, Cecilia, or even herself.

Briony becomes a nurse in the hopes that devoting herself to a discipline that is useful and necessary, and punishing herself by abandoning her literature degree at Cambridge, might allow her to atone for her mistakes. However, while Briony is a good nurse, and she no doubt provides life-saving services to wounded World War II soldiers, she cannot atone for her specific sin by doing general acts of goodness. Because there is no way to turn back the clock or wipe Robbie’s record, it is impossible for Briony to completely rectify her mistake. Thus, it is also impossible for her to be fully forgiven by Robbie and Cecilia, or herself. Becoming a nurse is a form of self-punishment that has no real effect on the situation that Briony is punishing herself for. Briony can give up writing and work as hard as she wants, but until she succeeds in clearing Robbie’s name, nothing else she does can atone for her actions. Of course, we know that Briony will sadly never get the chance to fulfill this atonement, as Robbie will not survive WWII.

Briony would change her evidence, she would rewrite the past so that the guilty became the innocent. But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was. No one would be redeemed by a change of evidence, for there weren’t enough people, enough paper and pens, enough patience and peace, to take down the statements of all the witnesses and gather in the facts.

In the novel’s second part, where Robbie is the sole POV character and is fighting in World War II, he reflects on Cecilia’s news while waiting to be rescued at Dunkirk. In her latest letter, Cecilia has told Robbie that Briony wishes to visit her, and likely wants to recant her evidence about the rape. This could mean that Robbie’s record is cleared, and he might even be able to attend medical school. However, suffering from blood poisoning and understandably numbed by the terror and trauma of the Second World War, Robbie can’t find it in himself to be truly excited by this good news. The war has irrevocably changed him and his perspective on humanity. While Robbie is justifiably angry with Briony and knows he cannot fully forgive her for her actions, serving in WWII shows Robbie the vastness of human suffering beyond his singular situation.

The chaos and horror of WWII blurs the lines between the guilty and the victim. In war, everyone becomes guilty of something, and everyone also suffers. Robbie knows that, after the war, it will be impossible for anyone to truly atone for their crimes, or to be given the necessary reparations for what they have endured. Due to WWII, Robbie can no longer see himself as a unique victim who has been wronged in greater ways than the countless men and women whose lives have also been destroyed. Can Robbie himself truly be found guilty of leaving a woman and her son to be killed by a bomb? Can he ever truly atone for his role in their deaths? Furthermore, how can apologies or reparations ever be made to this incinerated woman and her child? The agony and misery of WWII can never be organized back into a neat legal proceeding. The suffering and pain are too great, too overwhelming, to be recorded and archived in the way that Robbie’s rape trial and consequent punishment were recorded and archived. Practically everyone involved, soldiers and civilians both, is guilty of killing a person, or failing to help another—but all these guilty people are also victims. The war helps Robbie perceive his own circumstances from a wider and more nuanced lens, in which it is difficult to cast Briony solely as guilty and himself solely as innocent. The reality is more complicated than that.

Next section Quotes by Theme

Take a Study Break