Atonement and the Failure of the General Point of View

To what extent are the protagonists of ‘Atonement’ and ‘The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead’ similar and different?

Agnes’s spiritual ‘atonement’, helping to ‘guide her home’ is regularly influenced by the state of the weather and natural occurrences on the landscape. Agnes is offered two experiences of redemption in the novel. One being predominately religious, aided by reverend Toti and the other being sense of belonging and acceptance to a family. In this heavily Christian society, Agnes is given a ‘spiritual advisor,’ who takes on the responsibility to ‘save her.’ As Agnes’ begins to confide in Toti and learn to rely on him the weather gradually becomes increasingly ‘miserable’ rendering it difficult for the two to meet. At the climax of the novel, ‘travelling to Kornsa in this unfit weather’ has resulted in Toti’s ‘fever’ leaving Agnes ‘scared’ and deprived of her confidant. Despite Toti representing her divine redemption, the two form an alliance stemming from predominately companionship, demonstrated when Toti ‘forgot’ his New Testament at home when going to meet Agnes. Additionally, Agnes is emotionally redeemed when experiencing a sense of belonging at Korsna. Amidst the natural process of childbirth occurring in the landscape Agnes aids the ‘newborn’ by recognizing it is in ‘breach.’ This

The beginning part of a novel is one of the most important parts, as it sets the stage for what’s to come for the remainder of the novel. Thus, it is imperative for authors to address significant aspects in the beginning of their novels, which is an idea that is exemplified by both works by Hurston and Austen. In the two novels, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston and Pride and Prejudice by Austen, the opening sentences shape meaning to the novels by foreshadowing the eminent events of the novels and using figurative language to emphasize the importance of the polarized views and ideas of men and women that enflame the conflict throughout the novels.

Atonement, by Ian McEwan, explores the theme of love through a variety of techniques such as symbolism, metaphors and repetition delve into various aspects of love, such as misspent, newfound and unavailable love. Uniquely, McEwan intertwines these techniques with foreshadowing and imagery to convey complex emotions such as love, guilt and jealousy. Additionally, the theme of reality and the imagination is established through repetition and Cecilia’s characterisation.

He makes some very good points about the importance of unifying all of the atonement theories. We can have these great theories, but we need to unite them together. When we allow them to work together, and rethink them it can help us. It gives us a more open mind of letting new ideas in. There is no better person to unite all of these theories through than Jesus, after all, it is through him that this is all possible. McKnight applies identification and incorporation well to each of the theories. It allows for that new look that we need sometimes. I also think that he had a good response to people who argue against the penal substitution theory. I feel like people get very passionate about their theology and become close minded. They fail to see the flaws and address them. McKnight does this and allows the reader to see another way of looking at it and is careful not to force his views on the

Cecilia is without any doubt one of the main characters of Atonement written by Ian McEwan. He is able to show the reader her passionate, pensive and passive state through her behaviour and attitude in various scenes. Her character is not as deep as Briony's or Robbie's as the reader does not get many chapters in which one can hear her thoughts and feelings. Nevertheless Cecilia's actions say a lot about her; how she took of her her clothes to get to vase manifests her stubborness and well. More over her character is further developed through her interactions with Robbie from the letters she sends him.

O’Connor takes her main characters through an epiphany in which therefore helps the characters to become aware of their own ignorance. The characters eventually gained knowledge or better yet became self-aware of their attitudes towards others through some form of an unexpected tragedy. O’Connor wants her readers to see how no matter how much you try to cover or justify your ignorant ways whether it be through grace, judgment is still imminent. “In A Good Man is Hard to Find”, O’Connor reveals in this story both grace, redemption and pride. The

From the moment Atonement begins it becomes clear that Briony, at age thirteen, is aware of the power writing has. To her, writing can make “ the childhood of a spoiled prince can be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word--a glance”

As we move through Holy Week, the journey of Lent leads Christians to not simply commemorate Jesus ' suffering on the cross, but engage the paschal event on every level of our experiences. For me, this included questioning the impact of the execution which stands so central to Christianity. In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander describes how the mass incarceration of black Americans has been steadily undermining any progress made by the civil rights movement. She argues that even though Jim Crow laws are no longer written, the plethora of young people of color arrested remain marginalized by a broken justice system. The United States represents about 4.4% of the world 's population, it houses around 22 % of the world 's prisoners, an overwhelming majority of whom are young, poor, and black. Recently, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed a bill to allow the use of the electric chair in executions when the drugs for lethal injections are not available. How has this frighteningly oppressive system become normative justice for America? Does focusing on the crucifixion as the foundation of Christian transition per-dispose modern Christians to be unconcerned with the death penalty as a fixture of our justice system? In this essay, I will explore the impact of a deformed atonement theology on modern Christian 's interactions with our

At first reading, Ian McEwan’s Atonement seems to be a modernist novel that owes much of its stylistic techniques to classic novels by authors such as Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen. That is, until the first-time reader turns a page to discover the epilogue entitled “London, 1999” and has this illusion shattered by the revelation that in fact Parts One, Two, and Three were penned by none other than the 77-year-old Briony Tallis. This epilogue, and what it divulges about the events we have just read, turns the book into a metafiction. A close rereading of the book turns up multiple references to the fact that it is in fact a manuscript written by the elderly Briony. McEwan’s metafictional

As Lockwood lays to rest in the third chapter of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, he is wrought with a dream of a fictional Reverend Jabez Branderham and his surplus of sins. The dream almost reads as incomprehensible at first glance, especially when wedged between Lockwood’s visions of Catherine Earnshaw, but the dream holds clout in the overarching tale of Wuthering Heights, especially when taking its moral implications into consideration. To implement a biblical allusion in one’s text requires the understanding that, no matter what one intends to do with the material, it will remain morally-charged nonetheless. The material can be contorted or figured into a new message altogether, but some moral proposition will certainly remain. In the case of Lockwood’s dream, Brontë’s allusion to Peter and his interest in forgiveness are contorted to address what happens when the threshold of forgiveness is surpassed. Furthermore, the dream does not grapple with the power of forgiveness, but with the level of desperate exasperation one reaches after prolonged anguish. It is through the contortion of such a biblical allusion that Lockwood is met with what is essentially a warning against staying at either Thrushcross Grange or Wuthering Heights—a warning which he ultimately disregards, thus leading to his exposure to the litany of terrors which exist in the story of Wuthering Heights.

To begin, in part one of “Atonement” we learn who each character is through the perspective of different characters. Alongside we get the unique perspective of several scenes that take place. One very important scene is the fountain scene where Robbie and Cecilia are filling a vase with water and Robbie causes the vase to slip out of Cecilia’s hands breaks some pieces falling into the fountain. Cecilia acts fast and removes her clothing in order to retrieve the vase piece. Meanwhile, you have Briony wondering her room and happens to see the two conversing and is shocked to see Cecilia remove her clothes. Briony begins to assume things instantly “ The Triton fountain, and standing by the basin’s retaining wall was her sister, and right before her was Robbie Turner. There was something rather formal about the way he stood, feet apart, head held back. A proposal of marriage. Briony would not have been surprised. She herself had written a tale in which a humble woodcutter saved a princess from drowning and ended by marrying her. What was presented here fitted well. Robbie Turner” (36). Here Briony is only able to see the interactions between Robbie and Cecilia but she can’t necessarily hear anything but, it doesn’t impede her

Briony Tallis: Briony Tallis is the protagonist of Atonement. Though Briony has two older siblings, Leon and Cecilia, they are both at least ten years her senior. Therefore, Briony grows up virtually as an only child and as a result is quite self-centered. Briony is introduced to readers when she is working on her play The Trials of Arabella. Through Briony’s writing process and inner thoughts, readers are made aware of her obsession with order and control. This obsession combined with her self-absorbed mindset fosters Briony’s unaware naïveté. Briony believes that she understands everything that occurs around her, when in reality, she cannot understand adult concepts and ideas that do not yet pertain to her. It is this obliviousness that leads to her rape accusations against Robbie—Briony is unable to see the love between her older sister Cecilia and Robbie, the servant’s son. Once Briony matures, she begins to realize the depth of the consequences of her actions, and throws herself into atoning her “sins.” In doing so, she writes her own novel involving a couple that represents Robbie and Cecilia, and feels that she can relieve herself of guilt by admitting to her wrongdoings and rewriting the fates of the two lovers. However, the novel simply paints Briony’s naïveté in a new light—though she has grown up, she is still unaware of the dire

In his essay “Who Killed Robbie and Cecilia? Reading and Misreading Ian McEwan’s Atonement,” Martin Jacobi argues that Ian McEwan dramatizes misreading and warns readers against misreading, but also causes his readers to incorrectly read his novel. Jacobi shows us how easy it is to misread in Atonement and this makes readers more likely to sympathize with Briony’s misreading. He further discusses how the narrative encourages us to believe that Robbie and Cecilia’s love story must end tragically even though there is no reason to do so. Even though the readers see what terrible results Briony’s misreadings have on both Robbie and Cecilia, we are then tempted to make the same kinds of misinterpretations about how they turn out. In his literary analysis of these aspects of Ian MacEwan’s Atonement, Jacobi makes it clear to readers that they are wrong to assume that Robbie and Cecilia die, so if they decide that they have died, the readers are the ones who kill them. While I agree with Jacobi’s claim that the narrative does not clearly tell us whether Robbie and Cecilia die, in this essay I will argue that assuming that Robbie and Cecilia die is a very reasonable supposition and it is a more logical assumption than that the couple does not die. Jacobi himself states that “the most dominant interpretation for reviewers and critics is indeed that Robbie and Cecilia die during the war” (Jacobi 57). Perhaps Jacobi overanalyzed the text to create an opposition that there was no need

The ostracism that must have been felt by the two characters in the assignment for unit three must have been atrocious for the two to bear. In the novel The Fifth Child the reader’s perspective of Ben was written as such that the character of Ben was a degenerated that was born into an impeccable family system that was forced to deal with his unbearable behavior. In the book A High Wind in Jamaica Margaret’s character was that of a preteen child that was forced to bear the attention of inappropriate pirates as well as the rejection by her fellow companions. Both characters were of equal innocence when their story began, but would assume different roles as the novels progressed. My goal of this paper is to compare the same excommunication that each child had to bear within comparison to the ways that the other characters treated both Ben and Margaret without repentance.