What is the significance of Briony’s play?

Briony’s play, The Trials of Arabella, bookends the novel. In Part One, the play represents Briony’s need to control her life and her own narratives, and her frustration at the way other people corrupt and change the stories she has constructed for herself. The performance of the play falls apart because Briony is irritated with her cousins’ inability to bring it to life as she imagined, and she devotes herself to being a novelist instead, as this medium allows her to be the sole director of her work. Briony’s inability to allow for the nuances and differences of other people’s minds and experiences is what leads her to mistakenly accuse Robbie of rape. She is used to the world working in a way that makes sense to her, and when Robbie does not make sense to her, she manipulates the motives behind his actions and behaviors to fit a narrative she recognizes. By the end of the novel, however, the play takes on a different connotation. Briony, Leon, and Pierrot’s grandchildren put on a performance of the play for the elderly Briony as a tribute on her 77th birthday. The performance is profoundly moving for Pierrot, who sees it as a reminder of a long-forgotten time, when he was united with his now-dead twin, Jackson, and his now-estranged sister, Lola. Briony is affected by the happy ending she wrote for the play’s lovers, who sail into the sunset together at the play’s conclusion. She feels that this ending is what should have happened to Robbie and Cecilia, and what might have belonged to them had she not so ruinously affected the narrative of their lives. Thus, for Briony, the play is a shadow of what could have been had she not made her fateful mistake.

Why does Briony believe Robbie is the rapist?

There are several events and mistaken conclusions that lead Briony to believe that Robbie is Lola’s rapist. Crucially, Briony does not understand the dynamics of adult sexuality and romance. When she observes the puzzling scene between Cecilia and Robbie that takes place at the fountain, Briony recognizes there’s something happening that she doesn’t understand. She does not yet feel cause for concern but is instead inspired to begin writing about adult relationships. However, it is Robbie’s letter to Cecilia, which he asks Briony to deliver, that sends her back into the black-and-white world of childlike perception. When Briony sees an adult word in Robbie’s letter, she immediately recognizes it as vulgar and demeaning, and assumes that Robbie is using it in a depraved and violent context. She does not understand that this word can also appear in erotic contexts and does not always carry a degrading connotation. Thus, the letter recontextualizes the fountain scene for Briony, and she now sees it as evidence that Robbie is a threatening presence, stalking Cecilia and waiting for the moment to attack.

Finally, it is the scene in the library, where Briony walks in on Robbie and Cecilia having consensual sex, that convinces Briony of Robbie’s villainy. To Briony, the sight of her sister pushed into a corner of the room by Robbie is evidence that he is a sexual predator. Cecilia’s icy exit from the room does nothing to quell Briony’s sense that her sister has been victimized. Later, when Briony searches the grounds alone for the twins, she realizes that Robbie may be a threat to other women in the family, not just Cecilia, and it is almost precisely at this moment of realization that she stumbles upon the rape. To make matters worse, both Robbie and Paul Marshall are large, tall men, easily mistaken for one another on a dark night.

Why does Briony become a nurse?

Briony becomes a nurse because she feels that she must do something more “useful” with her life than studying English and writing at Cambridge. This feeling largely comes from a place of guilt, as Briony believes she doesn’t truly deserve to pursue her passion for literature because she has robbed Cecilia and Robbie of their passions. In some ways, by becoming a nurse, Briony fulfills the life path and study of medicine that Robbie was forced to abandon. Along with nursing being a penance for her past mistakes, it is also a profession that strips Briony of her sense of individuality. As a child, Briony’s precocious nature made her a particularly unique and imaginative child; she had a strong identity and knew that she wanted to be a writer. Part of Briony’s atonement is allowing this identity—which ultimately caused her to overanalyze Robbie’s actions and invent a damaging fiction about him—to be broken down and discarded by the intensity and uniformity of nursing. As a nurse, Briony’s desires and passions fall to the wayside in lieu of the work of saving other people’s lives. Her identity, including her first name, is left behind as she becomes a cog in the greater machine of nursing. Additionally, nursing is also a rejection of her wealth and family: turning down Cambridge, distancing herself from her parents and their money, and taking on a physically and emotionally difficult job are all important steps toward Briony gaining independence and recognizing the role that classist power dynamics play in deciding the fates of individual people such as herself and Robbie.

Who does Lola marry?

While Briony serves her time as a nurse, she attends Lola’s wedding to Paul Marshall. The Marshall family is already wealthy and about to become exceedingly rich due to the military’s use of the Amo candy bar as part of the soldier’s ration. Thus, Lola’s parents are happy with the match and with their family’s heightened social status. However, what they don’t know is that Lola is marrying her rapist. The effects of Briony’s mistake not only condemned Robbie to prison and Cecilia to a life estranged from her family, but also allowed Paul Marshall to walk free, continue courting Lola, and eventually marry her. While Atonement dwells only briefly on Lola and Paul Marshall’s inner experiences, it’s implied that Lola was understandably terrified of Marshall. Frightened into docility, Lola chooses to allow Robbie to go to prison for the rape rather than face her real abuser. Later, Lola may have convinced herself that she was in love with Marshall rather than contend with the violence that she was subjected to. Briony’s presence at her wedding is distasteful to her because it reminds her of the terrible truth—she has married her attacker and is now under his power forever.

How do Robbie and Cecilia die?

In Part Two of the novel, it’s clear that Robbie suffers from an infected wound and is seriously unwell by the time his POV section ends. However, because his friend Nettle tells Robbie that they will be rescued by boat the next day, and because Briony meets with Robbie after he has returned from service, the reader is led to believe that Robbie was treated for his infection and lived with Cecilia for a time before returning to the war. In the novel’s final part, Briony reveals that this meeting was fictional, and that both Robbie and Cecilia died during World War II. Robbie did in fact die from blood poisoning caused by his infected wound and he never made it onto the boats that collected the wounded men at Dunkirk. Cecilia later died in the Blitz, a nearly year-long period in which Germany serially bombed major English cities. Briony also notes that Cecilia lived to be informed of Robbie’s death, which occurred prior to Lola and Paul Marshall’s marriage. While Briony really did attend Lola’s wedding in Clapham, she did not visit Cecilia’s apartment afterward as she does in her fictionalized account. Aware that Robbie had recently died, Briony didn’t think her grieving sister would welcome her company.

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