‘She would rewrite the past’ : Briony as narrator-manipulator in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

摘要

Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel Atonement1 is mainly concerned with theudprotagonist Briony Tallis’s efforts to atone for a crime she committed in 1935 as audyoung teenager. This crime was that of bearing false witness. Briony’s mendaciousudtestimony condemns an upright young man – Robbie Turner, son of the Tallises’udcharwoman – to public ignominy and a long prison sentence for rape. Briony alsoudseparates her older sister Cecilia from Robbie, whom the young woman is secretlyudin love with. Both the lovers die in the Second World War, leaving behind a Brionyudracked with guilt, hoping to find a way to atone for the harm she has done them.udAfter much soul-searching she decides that the best way in which she can atoneudfor her crime is through the medium of her chosen vocation – that of fiction. LikeudMcEwan himself, in fact, Briony Tallis is a writer. Shortly after the lovers’ deaths, sheuddetermines to write a novel which will constitute her ‘atonement’ (p. 349). Briony’sud‘atonement novel’, the reader discovers in the coda (pp. 351–72) is, in effect, theudnovel he holds in his hands. This paper sets out to assess Briony’s success in atoningudfor her crime by means of the novel Atonement. The main point it seeks to make isudthat, far from representing an adequate atonement for a serious crime, Atonement isudyet another of this devious character’s diversionary ploys.