Briony's Journey Atonement

The inevitability of the protagonist’s actions is that both are shown to be guilty in their adulthood. The reader learns that Briony becomes a nurse and gives up a chance to go to Oxford and the class privileges that result from it. The reader learns that “the purpose of becoming a nurse was to work for her independence” as well as learning what Robbie is going through in the army. We later learn that the narrative has been written by Briony and some parts have been fictionalised such as the meeting with Robbie and Cecilia so she can try and put right what she could not do in life. Like Atonement Stephen in Spies feel guilty about the death of Uncle Peter and revisits The Close in which he grew up to atone. This is where the narrative takes place, “you can’t go back everyone knows that” implying that “everyone” knows that it was his fault. This is an interesting comment made by Stephen because surely Stephen and the reader know that it is Keith’s father who is to blame ultimately for the discovery and death of Uncle Peter after Stephen and his confrontation over the picnic basket. Both protagonists, we learn have been putting the idea of properly confronting and trying to amend (as best they can) their actions off until the latest time possible. The reader learns that Briony falsities the ending and meeting of Cecilia and Robbie in the final chapters where she is close to forgetting all of her memories through

Pamela Colloff’s “The Innocent Man,” is an eye-opening, gut-wrenching essay in which Colloff beautifully takes a high complexity prejudiced case of a guilty murder verdict and successfully brings to light her inspiring character Michael Morton’s true innocence in a flawed justice system. Suspense, sadness and frustration are effectively provoked from the reader about Michael’s tragic nightmare which persists for over two decades of time. A nightmare which begins when Michael returns home from work on August 13, 1986, to find out his dead wife was beaten to death in their bed. This is only the beginning of what Colloff unfolds in her writing of Michael’s twenty-five-year agonizing battle behind bars. Step by step Colloff’s marvelous writing

Throughout the story, it is overtly shown how guilt can play a powerful role in one’s actions, which is fundamentally shown through our protagonist, Duncan. Duncan is a teen who suffers from a phenomenon known as survivor’s guilt as a result of him being unable to save Maya from drowning. Being tormented by his guilt for over a year, Duncan sees the discovery of Roach’s journal as an opportunity to redeem himself as he subconsciously cannot bare the thought of being accountable for another death. (McNamee 104) After the killer dies, he is able to find closure as he no longer feels responsible and vindicates himself for Maya’s death. Through this, readers are able to perceive how the redemption of guilt can be a pivotal factor to lead to a person’s gallant actions while they recuperate from their guilt, thus showing how the redemption of guilt can empower heroic actions.

Experiencing further unstable environments, these children are forced to move from one foster home to another. They rarely develop meaningful relationships and constantly endure lack of care and protection by adults. Sabreen, another gifted student, was able to excel in school despite her unstable environments. She, too, became a ward of the county battling to find a stable home, constantly being placed in unstable environments, environments that do not encourage any achievement. When her situation becomes untenable, she goes AWOL, like Olivia, refusing to return to county supervision. Corwin masterfully frames the problem that wards, like Olivia and Sabreen, face when they feel that going back into the system is not an option. The additional struggles can be seen through Olivia and Sabreen accepting jobs with long hours in order to make enough to pay their bills. The responsibility on taking care of themselves financially detracts from their studies, which quickly can become a vicious, never-ending cycle.

After reading “the Innocent Man” by Pamela Colloff’s who write a long journalism about Michael Morton, who was found guilty for murdering his wife Christine was sentenced for fifteen years in prison. Later founding that Michael was Innocent after reinvestigating his case, capturing DNA testing and finding new evidence was able to help prove his innocence. The theme of this essay a widow husband who seek to fight for his freedom in prison and staying connected with his son. Michal son Eric gave him a reason to have hope that they would one day reunite and his son would know for himself that he did murder his wife. The point of view of this essay although a man is falsely accuse for a crime he did not commit he is self-determined to fight.

After Jack has grasped the truth that every man has a long heritage of deeds both noble and sinful—deeds that have lessons to teach and consequences to give in the present day—he finds himself able to tell Anne “how if you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other, and how if you could accept the past you might hope for the future, for only out of the past can you make the future" (Warren 461). The “burden” of which Jack speaks refers to the accountability of man for his past, to the

In the novel Atonement, McEwan juxtaposes the unique but conflicting ways that his characters perceive and understand their world. McEwan intentionally

Whilst in conversation with Lola, Briony’s cousin, Briony tells her of all the events involving Robbie so far, this conveys once more that Briony is a meddling child as she is telling false accusations to people who are not involved in the situation. We can also evidence once more of Briony attention seeking as she had a ‘desire to share a secret and show the older girl that she too had worldly experiences’. Lola further urges Briony’s imagination and makes her belief that Robbie is a ‘maniac’ and could ‘attack anyone’. Following this we can see that not only is Briony immature but she is also ignorant of what is happening and would still rather belief the story that she is building. We can see this when Briony reflects on the memories she had of Robbie as child when he would ‘carry her on his back’ and when he ‘taught her one summer how to tread water and breast stroke’, and instead she perceives these innocent acts to be dangerous as Briony said he ‘pretended to be a beast’ and that ‘she had been alone with him many times at the swimming hole’. These acts would make Robbie seem untrustworthy to a child because beasts are a common factor in children’s nightmares and the thought of a man being

Guilt is a powerful emotion that can greatly affect the course of a person’s life. Dunny’s character, in Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, first experienced guilt at an early age due to a tragic accident. A snowball that was meant for Dunny hit a pregnant woman, Mrs. Dempster, causing her to go into premature labour. Although her child, Paul Dempster, survived, the guilt that Dunny experienced from his part in the situation would stay with him for the rest of his life. Guilt stayed with Dunny’s character throughout his life, and continually affected all of his actions.

After finally have a stable caretaker, Ellenette Brown, she began to have very jealous act and behavior towards other children relationships with adoptive mother. As she grew up she veered off from her mother and began to do her own thing that lead to running away. Cyntoia says “I wasn’t running from; I was running to”. Cyntoia thought the streets of Nashville would give her freedom. As she roamed the streets she meet her pimp and boyfriend “Kutthroat”. Kutthroat was a drug dealer, he would sexually abuse Cyntoia then throw her out to the streets to do prostitution and earn him money for drugs and his wants. With Cyntoia’s adoptive mother knowing all of this know; she wonders why Cyntoia could not just talk to her about the problems going on. Brown says that her adoptive mother would not have listened and also Kutthroat would not let her out of his

Overall, the Brice family has some clear issues that are causing stress for everyone, including their adolescent daughter Claudia. The family did not believe in the power of family therapy, yet they had little places to turn to in response to Claudia's growing anger problems. They had tried therapy before, but to no avail. We are introduced to their problems both from a description of the anger between each other and their own explanations of what is going on. Their son Don is absent, both literally and figuratively, showing how he tends to avoid the overall family struggles. Claudia's role in the family dynamic was described early on by her mother, yet this explanation was done in a very isolating way for Claudia. Her mother explained her "strange" ideas, but that only invoked a strong and angry reaction from Claudia herself. In fact, the two seemed to feed off one another in terms of their anger. It is clear that the main issues were a discrepancy between what Claudia wanted her life to be like and the heightened rules and expectations her family was imposing on her. Mother and daughter continuously engaged in fighting, clearly not seeing each others point of view, but too caught up in their own emotional reactions regarding the situation. The fact that Don wasn't present just put more highlight on Claudia, and showed how the family viewed her as the problem, not taking responsibility for it themselves. This was felt by

228) in relation to the way that she is not able to rid herself of the way she separated two lovers. Briony had previously confessed to Robbie when she was ten-years-old, as revealed by Robbie’s thoughts in part 2 of the novel. “He had betrayed her love by favouring her [Briony’s] sister,” (pg. 233) which means Briony could have accused Robbie of rape to separate Cecilia from him. She did not feel guilty until she grew older and began to consider the complexity of her allegation. The war may take Robbie away from Cecilia and leave her devastated all because of a mistake Briony made. In addition, she will never be able to witness the lovers reuniting and may never be able to atone for her mistakes after all. Like a room without a door, she will not be able to escape the fact that she separated two

When it comes to exploring the point of view of this story, you can ask yourself a few questions. “This story is told in the first person by a teenage girl. What are the strengths and limitations of such a narrator?” (cited in Clugston, 2010, sec. 8.2, para. 203) The second question would be; “Edie makes this statement in the opening of the last section of the story, “I didn’t figure out till years

The accusations against him, brought by Briony Tallis, held him responsible for the violation of her cousin Lola. Robbie reflects on this, as Briony plans to refute her statement to the police, “The intricacies were lost to him, the urgency had died. 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… to…gather in the facts.” (188) Robbie’s loss of security and his future took away the childlike carefreeness he displayed before the accusation. Briony’s conscience weighs heavily on her as she moves from a naïve implication to the realization of the consequences.

Some might be outraged at the notion that rape is not to be considered a tragedy. It is, of course, a horrific act. One that inflicts so much damage that it can cause PTSD type triggers in survivors. Rape is a before/after moment, people who experience it begin to think of how life was before and now after the event. For instance, with the character Salima, her life before the incident included a loving family with her “good husband” (35) and