Essays on CLassicThis review may contain spoilers.
Find you, love you, marry you and live without shame.
——Atonement
When reading Ian McEwan’s works, I feel like a child, watching the most hidden part of my inner self being brazenly displayed on paper—innocent yet cruel, lovely but foolish. While marveling at how accurately it captures the essence, I also feel a tipsy sense of shame, yearning to gaze longer and deeper at this “other self.”
The novel is more cruel than the film. The novel’s strength lies in its torrential flow of thoughts and consciousness, demanding full engagement from the reader. The film, on the other hand, relies heavily on actors to create a certain illusion, making us feel as though we can keep up with the progression of thoughts. In the film, we can still indulge in our crushes on actresses like Keira Knightley, but in the novel, we are forced to endure the childish and verbose mental world of young Briony. Yet, the novel is also more captivating than the film. Images are too surface-oriented and ultimately require words to interpret, whereas only through words can we achieve the possibility of “full engagement.”
This is a cold story. Thirteen-year-old Briony is immersed in an obsessive passion for writing and fantasy, while Cecilia and Robbie struggle to navigate the changes in their relationship. Lola, Jackson, and Pierrot, at a young age, are sent to live as dependents in the Tallis household, while Mrs. Tallis, enduring her husband’s infidelity and persistent headaches, tries to hold the transitioning Tallis family together. This chaotic mess reaches its peak during a distressing summer, much like Briony’s hastily rehearsed play—tedious and oppressive. Lola is raped, and Briony, driven by her imagination and prejudice, accuses Robbie, sending this promising young man to prison with a “clear-minded, malicious, relentless, unwavering, and unquestioning” conviction. Thus, three lives are irrevocably changed.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part, from Briony’s perspective, describes the events leading up to the rape. The second part follows Robbie’s military life after his release from prison. The third part explores Briony’s reflections and attempts at redemption as a trainee nurse.
Although the first part spans only two days, the author uses an almost exaggeratedly lengthy narrative to depict the events within those two days. This is classic McEwan—extensive subjective descriptions of the environment, weather, scenery, and the characters’ actions, expressions, and dialogue. This stream-of-consciousness style, with its tentacle-like reach, lurks in every corner of the mansion, and after endless complaints about the oppressive heat, we know that at some critical point, the monster will retract its tentacles and crush everything. Briony, much like our younger selves, is sensitive, arrogant, and lost in fantasy, constantly battling an imaginary enemy. Her obsession with writing likely stems from the satisfaction of “becoming an emperor” in her stories, where everything is orderly and structured. “Death is the privilege of the morally deficient, and marriage is a report that is only delivered on the last page.” Part of her mind is precocious, but another part remains childish, leading to her fragile, almost puritanical view of love, making her easily shattered. When the real world deviates from the moral trajectory of her fantasy world, she frantically tries to extract delusions from her imagination to fill the gaps in reality’s logic, but this only leads to misunderstandings and illusions. Briony is a child who trusts her illusions more than reality.
A recurring theme in McEwan’s works is the absence of male symbols (or the absence of the father figure). In The Comfort of Strangers, the father exists only as a shadow in memory. In The Cement Garden, both parents die at the beginning. In Atonement, Jack Tallis is absent during the rape incident, trapped on a train, while Leon, as the eldest son, fails to act, allowing a thirteen-year-old girl to take charge. This absence creates a story suffused with a feminine sensibility—an acute awareness of atmosphere and environment, a trait typically associated with women. What does this feminine perspective bring? First, it leads to emotional thinking and a latent hostility toward men. Second, it fosters an obsession with fantasy, where they would rather believe the testimony of a thirteen-year-old than face Robbie’s honest and blameless life. The imbalance of power also results in an inappropriate sense of responsibility. With men absent, the burden falls on women. Cecilia and Mrs. Tallis feel they must shoulder the responsibility for the family, though their narrow shoulders cannot bear the weight. Briony, in particular, develops a pathological sense of responsibility toward her sister, and it is this misguided sense of protection that leads to her tragic mistake.
After his release from prison, Robbie joins the army, maintaining a correspondence with Cecilia, who has severed ties with the Tallis family and become a battlefield nurse. They express their love and devotion in their letters, planning to reunite after the war and start a new life together. Briony, abandoning her Cambridge degree, becomes a trainee nurse. The third part chronicles her life as a nurse. In the hospital, she and her colleagues are tasked with the dirtiest and most exhausting work, and after hours, they must complete school assignments. Her childhood guilt and sense of wrongdoing become her nightmares, and she punishes herself in this way. When all your energy is spent cleaning and disinfecting instruments, there’s little room left for tormenting conscience. She even attends Robbie’s wedding, watching as he marries the man who once raped her. Is this irony or a form of closure? In Lola’s cold gaze, Briony realizes that everyone knows the truth but chooses to remain silent. She finds Cecilia’s residence and meets Robbie there. In her presence, they share a long, passionate embrace. Briony promises to confess her false testimony to her parents, issue a statement, and swear to her lawyer. They walk together, escorting her to the subway station, and for a moment, forgiveness seems possible. But those who have read the book know this is not the true ending. The lovers’ reunion is just another fantasy of Briony’s.
The most ingenious aspect of the book lies not in its “book-within-a-book” structure but in how this structure is presented. Remember the letter Briony receives from the publisher? She submits her work, Two Figures by the Fountain, and receives a response. The editor praises the story for “capturing the stream of consciousness and revealing its nuances to the reader,” and for “meticulously describing their perceptions while still vividly portraying light, stone, and water.” Isn’t this exactly what we felt while reading the first part? It turns out that not only the third part but the entire Atonement is written by Briony. No wonder the narrative is so feminine; no wonder the second part, compared to the first and third, has slightly thinner characterizations and less elaborate descriptions, with some implausible elements. It’s because it’s a story she imagined, and she couldn’t truly experience the chaos of a retreating army. No wonder time seems frozen in the first part—Briony uses this repetitive narrative to alleviate her guilt. This is where the story begins, where the crime hasn’t yet been committed, where the veil of emotion is just being lifted, and where the lovers are about to share their first sweet drink. She wishes time would stop there, rather than the 64 years that follow.
Briony’s atonement isn’t about becoming a nurse but about writing, rediscovering the ugly truth about herself, exposing the foolish roots of her snobbery, and restoring the pure love that once existed, erasing the tragic fate of the lovers. The real story has already ended—neither grand nor hollow, but hasty and merciless.
In the final chapter, the seventy-seven-year-old Briony returns to her hometown, now transformed into a hotel. Here, she celebrates her seventy-seventh birthday. The unfinished play The Trials of Arabella, abandoned decades ago, finally premieres 64 years later. The once-inadequate child actors are now emaciated elders in the audience, moved by the scene. And Briony’s trials will end in slow forgetfulness.
There is sin and there are lovers here. If one thing leaves a lingering sadness, it’s not the sin itself but the fact that it cannot be forgiven, because the only two people who could forgive her are no longer alive.
