Previous Next

She had no secrets. Her wish for a harmonious, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel.

Briony is not mean-spirited at heart and has no wish to destroy other people’s lives or cause them pain. Her accusation of Robbie comes from her naivete about adult behavior and her sincere wish to keep the world organized and content. She has convinced herself that Robbie is bad because she doesn’t understand how his behavior could be explained any other way. However, it’s worth noting that this characterization of Briony as someone lacking the ability to be purposefully cruel comes from Briony herself, as she is writing the novel, and has the potential to be an unreliable statement.

My darling one, you are young and lovely, but inexperienced, and though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.

When Briony writes her play, The Trials of Arabella, she includes a scene between Arabella and her father, in which the father warns his daughter that she is young and naive, and not as in control of the world as she believes herself to be. This passage holds substantial irony, as Briony is practically penning a warning to her own self. Her own writing foreshadows how she will make the same mistaken assumption as Arabella. Tragically, Briony’s latent wisdom will not save her future self from committing her crime.

Was everyone really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony?

At 13 years old, Briony is just beginning to grasp the depth and vastness of her own mind and experience, and is weighing the possibility that other people might also have that same level of depth in their own minds. This existential question is one that many people ponder as they grow into adulthood, and the logical answer is: yes, everyone is equally alive and possesses an intricate, unique personhood. However, while we may believe this conclusion, it can be harder to put it into action, to truly empathize with others and remember that their worlds are as vivid as our own. The writing of Atonement is an exercise in attempting to find this deep empathy, as Briony must do her best to put herself in Robbie and Cecilia’s shoes to do their characters justice.

The title lettering, the illustrated cover, the pages bound – in that world alone she felt the attraction of the neat, limited and controllable form she had left behind when she decided to write a play. A story was direct and simple, allowing nothing to come between herself and her reader.

After attempting to rope her cousins into performing her play, The Trials of Arabella, Briony finds herself disappointed with their inability to bring the vision in her mind to life. Thus, she abandons playwriting and turns instead to the novel, a form that allows Briony complete creative control over the final product. Briony’s need to direct every aspect of her creative work mirrors the way that she creates a narrative about Robbie and Cecilia’s relationship that fits her individual beliefs and perspectives, and does not take into account the possibility of other people’s differing perspectives.

She was abandoning herself to a life of strictures, rules, obedience, housework, and a constant fear of disapproval. She was one of a batch of probationers – there was a new intake every few months – and she had no identity beyond her badge.

When Briony chooses to become a nurse instead of attending Cambridge and studying literature, she is choosing to give up her own passions and identity as a form of punishment for what she did to Robbie. As a nurse, Briony must destroy her individuality in favor of being a member of a team, a sisterhood of nurses, whose only aim is to save the lives of others. While being a nurse does not result in Robbie’s forgiveness, it does teach Briony to deprioritize her own desires in lieu of serving others.

How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.

Briony’s guilt over her crime is something that haunts her throughout her entire life. She compares it with self-torture because she cannot stop herself from thinking about what she has done and telling herself that she is an unforgivable person. She will always have to live with the damage she did to Robbie and Cecilia. A rosary is a necklace of beads that Catholics often carry on their person and hold during prayer rituals. Thus, Briony’s guilt is like a rosary that she wears her entire life and constantly reflects on, with each bead representing a different detail of her mistake.

I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end.

Although Robbie and Cecilia both died in World War II, Briony writes a somewhat happy ending for them in her novel, letting them reunite and giving them hope that Briony’s recantation might bring positive changes to Robbie’s life. Briony is ambivalent about her decision to let the lovers live in her version of the story. On the one hand, there is nothing she can do about Robbie and Cecilia’s deaths except to give them in fiction the happy ending they will never receive in real life. On the other, she worries that giving them a happy ending is a way for her to avoid feeling the full extent of the pain and guilt that her crime has caused. Ultimately, Briony is in an impossible position, as WWII robbed her of the possibility of any concrete atonement. Thus, the only way she can bring happiness to Robbie and her long-dead sister is through storytelling.

Previous section Quotes by Theme Next section Cecilia Tallis

Take a Study Break