Does Briony Achieve Atonement

Atonement was written by Ian McEwan in 2002. The novel tells the story of thirteen year old Briony Tallis and her journey to reach atonement for the mistake she made in her childhood that sent Robbie Turner to prison, who later is identified as an innocent man. Ian McEwan takes Briony on a journey during which she goes through guilt, deceit, coming of age, and the struggle to reach atonement for that all began on the hottest night of the summer of nineteen thirty-five, when she sent an innocent man to prison, which spanned a period over sixty-four years.

Her life was not easy, her husband got shot and was left alone yet she came back to care for him. That didn’t stop him from verbally abusing him. But when push came to shove, she just left because she kept expressing how she felt. She could have killed her husband if she let her anger pile on inside but she let it out and it made a lot of space in her heart to forgive her husband. Writing and other forms of self-expression have helped many others alike so this says a lot about the usefulness of the literary arts.

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

In FYS we were taught many ways to live in the world through the stories we read, speeches we listen to, and the projects we did. In the book, Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger, The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, and Destiny of The Republic, by Candice Millard, I saw a few prominent themes of how one should live. In these three books I learned about the author 's voice through their writings. I saw how one should live their life. In these books the authors shared common themes through their writings. The authors showed how to live life with forgiveness and live life with faith. Krueger and Potok both showed me through their novels how to forgive someone and they did this by showing that there is a bigger picture in

“None of us have moved on from being that kid with a gun under the pillow waiting for him to come back from us. That's hard to live with,” she said. “We're afraid he's just smart enough to hid in woods somewhere with high powered rifle and start shooting us. I will spend every day for the rest of my life waiting for a bullet to arrive just because I happened to be the daughter of his victim. It makes me so angry he has this affect on us. I did nothing wrong. He chose to do

Lastly, her family betrayed her by not listening to her side of the story after her sister told lies about her, and they betrayed her when they acted as if they did not care if she moved out of the house. In all of these actions, the family itself and certain members of the family are portrayed as uncaring, unsupportive, disrespectful, conniving, deceitful, and hateful to Sister. Through every action of the family, Sister is treated harshly, and she tries to not let this bother her. Yet, anger and bitterness build up inside of her until she cannot take it anymore. Consequently, it built up so much inside of her that it severely affected Sister so profoundly that she moved away from her home to get away from her family.

To forgive is a difficult act to achieve. Lily was shocked by the horrid truth of her mother’s abandonment. Her dreams and assumptions of her mother shatters. “I do hate [my mother]. She wasn’t anything like I thought she was.

She uses her desire to further her education, an escape plan with her sister, and her shame from being a forager to motivate her to bring a change into her life. Despite the constrictions

Sylvia Fraser says, “To me, forgiveness is the cornerstone of healing.” This quotation means that forgiving someone is the key for there to be peace and moving on with their life, leaving the dreadful unforgiving past behind. One can agree with this quote, because when a person forgives another person they are relieved and feel better, moving forward with life, and letting go of the past. In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, it is working towards to self forgiveness and been able to find peace within oneself, which supports the of the quote.

Briony only starts to realise her crime as she grows older. In a letter to Robbie, Cecelia paraphrases a letter from Briony, "She's beginning to get the full grasp of what she did I think she wants to recant." When Briony goes to visit Cecelia, the reader comprehends that Briony doesn't want to withdraw her statement for Robbie's benefit but instead to find favour with her sister and to reassemble her previous family life: " 'I don't expect you to forgive me.' 'Don't worry about that", she said soothingly, Briony flinched as her hopes lifted unreally. ' Don't worry', her sister resumed.

Her attitude did not match her actions and often did not match her morals which she discovers this along with the loss of herself

The book that I read over this summer was Left to Tell by Immaculee Illbagiza.One theme in the book that stood out was Forgiveness it is the main theme of the book. Immaculée has to forgive the people who killed her love ones so that she doesn't have to worry about anyone else except for her selves the killers would also try forgive themselves for what they have done. Forgiveness is what God gives Immaculée the power to have, despite the terrible circumstances that make it nearly impossible.

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

To begin, the naïvety and distorted views of reality that Briony Tallis possess reveals her inability to understand the meaning of justice. Briony, who is only thirteen at the time, “views the adult world from a child’s perspective, seeing adult acts through the lense of melodrama” (“Atonement” 7). As result, in reading Robbie’s letter she immediately “[casts] herself as her sister’s protector” (McEwan 115), and thus imagines that Robbie is attacking Cecilia in the library. This can be seen in her perception that Cecilia’s forearm “was raised

Ian McEwan's novel Atonement is a story about two lovers separated by the second World War, although published 60 years after the fact in the year 2001. The story is a postmodern novel that features an unreliable narrator, the protagonist Briony, and therefore the entirety of the novel is questionable. Uses of other texts within Atonement aid in the foreshadowing of the story as well as developing an understanding of the plot as well as considering parallels to other literature.