Atonement Novel by Ian McEwan

Examination of truth

Introduction

 In the novel, ‘Atonement', the main character, Briony Tallis feels guilt and seeks atonement for the wrong accusation toward Robbie and for separating two lovers. Briony is aware of his cousin's Lona's sexual assault but she does not recognize the criminal. However, she tells people that Robbie committed sexual assault and the false accusations affect the life of Robbie since he spends several years in prison.  In the novel, the three chapters reveal how Briony relies on fiction or imagination and abandons truth but at the end of the novel she desires to testify and tell the truth. The three parts reveal various themes such as right and wrong, guilt and innocence, and truth and fiction. However, the central theme is truth and fiction since the main character desires to free from the chaos of the world by revealing the truth.  Note that Briony's imaginative life destroys the life of Robbie as well as his relationship with Cecilia. Every time she thinks about her sister and realizes the danger of fiction.  Briony creates various fiction scenarios but later, she develops a sense of reality and needs atonement.

 The first scenario that reveals the search for truth or the need to reveal the truth is when he writes a play known as ‘The Trials of Arabella'. She writes the play and starts to rehearse with the family members and in the process, Briony feels that her cousins Jackson and Lola will destroy her play (Ellam, 59). Also, the other family members are not satisfied with the play performance and everyone in the house abandons her and does not perform. Everything goes sour and Briony decides to write a story for her brother since its easier to convey.  As she pauses to think what to do, she stares at her sister and her lover at a fountain scene.  Briony creates fiction and concludes that Robbie is commanding her sister to accept her marriage request by forcing her to uncover herself and enter in the fountain so that Robbie can save her (Ellam, 75).  Note that this is an active imagination and to worsen the matter, she does not recognize that she is in a fairy tale world but she believes that she is in a real-life world.

 Six decades later, Briony reflects in 1935 and remembers the past imaginative things she was constructing. She considers all the imaginative accounts and tries to figure out the reality of each event. For example, she says that "the truth had become as ghostly as invention" (Boxall, 77).  In her memory, she is remembering how she treated fiction and how the fiction destroyed the life of her sister and Robbie. She desires a just world and she learns that words or in other words fiction, can destroy the life of others. Also in the play, when the family members including her cousins abandon the play, this means that her imagination is abandoned. In other words, she believes that she has power over her family members and that she would control them in the play (Boxall, 78). Another important point to note is that in the play ‘The Trials of Arabella',   she wants to play the role of heroine. Before her brother arrives, she tells the family members that ‘rehearsals, for the play, start in five minutes'. Note that when telling her cousins to rehearsal, she does not treat them as cousins but she sees them as cast.  In other words, she does not see the people as real people but she treats them as characters and controls them.  Since she is a writer, she controls people and makes decisions alone and aims to transform the world (Boxall, 79). However, the cousins argue that Briony should not be the heroine since she is the writer of the play. According to Briony, even though the cousins persuades her not to be the heroine and give the position,  she believes that she can take another position and act like a heroine who is abandoned by her mother. This tells that Bryony wants to be a playwright and a heroine and this means that she cannot separate truth from fiction. In the entire story, Briony's life is full of imaginative scenarios and she cannot separate the truth from fiction (Boxall, 79). Focusing on ‘The Trial of Arabella', it is important to understand that Briony abandons the play and writes a short story instead. This shows that in deciding to write a story, she is controlled by her manipulative desires, and she believes that the story will be successful than the play.  Note that she wants to gain control through imaginative writing which restricts her from separating fiction from truth.

Briony, a thirteen-year-old girl, is inexperienced but despite the lack of knowledge about social life, she believes that power is an important element in that it enables someone governs individual and groups. In the entire novel, Briony seems to exert power and control over other people especially her family members. She believes that she is powerful for being a good artist, and she is powerful because other family members look up to her (Gale, 1). However, at the end of the novel, Briony narrates what she has experienced while working as a nurse in London.  At this time, she is coming out from an imaginative world to the real world where truth is important than imagination. Remember that she wrongly accused Robbie and separated two lovers and she is ready to ask for forgiveness and atone for her sins.  In the process of seeking atonement, Briony is referred to as "imagined or ghostly personal' who did not differentiate between truth and fiction (Gale, 1). However, she goes to her sister's house where she meets Cecilia and Robbie.  As Briony tells them that she wants to seek forgiveness, the two tells her that she should write a letter.  Instead, Briony feels that she should write ‘an atonement' as a form of confession and tell the truth.

Conclusion

‘Atonement' talks about a lover's separation brought by the protagonist Briony. The latter wrongly accused Robbie that she raped her cousin Lola but later, Briony recognizes the mistake she did.  The reader depicts the Briony's undesirable imagination and the imagination play a significant role at the end of the novel as it allows the main character to make moral decisions and express moral truth. It is important to understand that Briony is a fictional character who later seeks atonement for her behaviors. Throughout the novel, Briony is concerned with the atonement since when she was young she was involved in various fictions that affect people's life. The imaginative life made her become a false witness.  Some of the crimes she performed due to the inability to separate truth from fiction include false accusing Robbie which resulted in a long prison sentence and separating two lovers, Robbie and Cecilia. After recognizing her mistakes several decades later, she writes a novel ‘Atonement' for serious crimes.   

 

 

                                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work cited

 

Gale, Cengage L. Study Guide for Ian Mcewan's Atonement. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, n.d.. Print.

 

Ellam, Julie. Ian Mcewan's Atonement. London: Continuum, 2009. Print.

 

Boxall, Peter. Twenty-first-century Fiction: A Critical Introduction. , 2013. Print.