Atonement Quotes
"a special moral for her The fact that McEwan is at pains to wrap his mid-20th Century
wrapped in a mystery" country house family tragedy up in the wider tragedy of WW2 –
not only with Robbie Turnerʼs fate at Dunkirk, but Paul Marshallʼs
success (beyond evading rape charges) at being a war profiteer –
leads me to suspect a Churchillian echo here. Britainʼs war time
Prime Minister told the nation that Russia was “a riddle wrapped
in a mystery inside an enigma”.
For Briony, the adult world is just such a mystery which serves its
own interests. Her special insight is to escape the childish
egotism for one short moment which up to this point leads her to
view the world through preconceived notions of facile romance
(such as Jane Austen's Catherine Morland). She discovers the
true moral by the end of the next paragraph - a moral which
McEwan implies may have saved us from a world war, if only the
civilised nations of Europe had learnt its lesson.
"This was not a fairy Emphasising the 13 year-old Brionyʼs epiphanic discovery of an
tale, this was the real, adult consciousness, this discounting of fairy tales enacts the
the adult world in which adult Brionyʼs “self-mocking, or mock-heroic tone” directed
frogs did not address towards her younger self. At this stage, we simply read it as the
princesses, and the young girl acknowledging the triviality of her writing up to now,
only messages were the but the choice of vehicle for this metaphorʼs fairy tale tenor – the
ones that people sent." story of the frog prince – is also ironically telling, though its hard
to say who knows it as such: the 13 year-old subject, the 73 year-
old author, or the ‘realʼ author McEwan?
"marbled, bakelite This nice touch of realism here not only adds period colour to
fountain pen." McEwanʼs writing, and reinforces Brionyʼs characterisation as a
precocious aesthete who would no doubt fancy herself an
established writer in the greatest literary traditions as she used
such a pen, but carries a verbal echo of her subject, the fountain
which has magically spouted this wonderful scene for her to
indulge her writing.
, "She could write the The power of writing is a major theme in the novel. When writing,
scene three times over, one can create their own world, reduced to whatever they decide
from three points of to make of it. For Briony, she finds deep excitement in this. She
view; her excitement has the freedom to produce good and bad characters, and shape
was in the prospect of their successes and struggles.
freedom, of being Literature from Homer, Chaucer and Shakespeare to Harper Lee
delivered from the has tried to teach us this same idea. In McEwanʼs plan for his
cumbrous struggle novel, he draws a connection between this bitterly ironic insight of
between good and bad, his 13-year-old protagonist (who shortly afterwards fails to reck
heroes and villains. her own rede when she accuses Robbie of rape) and World War II
None of these three – as much a failure of grasping the truth of other peoples' lives as
was bad, nor were they wickedness and scheming. Paul Marshallʼs war profiteering and
particularly good. She Robbieʼs experiences in France are far from accidental, not to
need not judge. There mention the symbolic linkage of the Meissen vase to World War I.
did not have to be a
moral. She need only
show separate minds,
as alive as her own,
struggling with the idea
that other minds were
equally alive."
"a special moral for her The fact that McEwan is at pains to wrap his mid-20th Century
wrapped in a mystery" country house family tragedy up in the wider tragedy of WW2 –
not only with Robbie Turnerʼs fate at Dunkirk, but Paul Marshallʼs
success (beyond evading rape charges) at being a war profiteer –
leads me to suspect a Churchillian echo here. Britainʼs war time
Prime Minister told the nation that Russia was “a riddle wrapped
in a mystery inside an enigma”.
For Briony, the adult world is just such a mystery which serves its
own interests. Her special insight is to escape the childish
egotism for one short moment which up to this point leads her to
view the world through preconceived notions of facile romance
(such as Jane Austen's Catherine Morland). She discovers the
true moral by the end of the next paragraph - a moral which
McEwan implies may have saved us from a world war, if only the
civilised nations of Europe had learnt its lesson.
"This was not a fairy Emphasising the 13 year-old Brionyʼs epiphanic discovery of an
tale, this was the real, adult consciousness, this discounting of fairy tales enacts the
the adult world in which adult Brionyʼs “self-mocking, or mock-heroic tone” directed
frogs did not address towards her younger self. At this stage, we simply read it as the
princesses, and the young girl acknowledging the triviality of her writing up to now,
only messages were the but the choice of vehicle for this metaphorʼs fairy tale tenor – the
ones that people sent." story of the frog prince – is also ironically telling, though its hard
to say who knows it as such: the 13 year-old subject, the 73 year-
old author, or the ‘realʼ author McEwan?
"marbled, bakelite This nice touch of realism here not only adds period colour to
fountain pen." McEwanʼs writing, and reinforces Brionyʼs characterisation as a
precocious aesthete who would no doubt fancy herself an
established writer in the greatest literary traditions as she used
such a pen, but carries a verbal echo of her subject, the fountain
which has magically spouted this wonderful scene for her to
indulge her writing.
, "She could write the The power of writing is a major theme in the novel. When writing,
scene three times over, one can create their own world, reduced to whatever they decide
from three points of to make of it. For Briony, she finds deep excitement in this. She
view; her excitement has the freedom to produce good and bad characters, and shape
was in the prospect of their successes and struggles.
freedom, of being Literature from Homer, Chaucer and Shakespeare to Harper Lee
delivered from the has tried to teach us this same idea. In McEwanʼs plan for his
cumbrous struggle novel, he draws a connection between this bitterly ironic insight of
between good and bad, his 13-year-old protagonist (who shortly afterwards fails to reck
heroes and villains. her own rede when she accuses Robbie of rape) and World War II
None of these three – as much a failure of grasping the truth of other peoples' lives as
was bad, nor were they wickedness and scheming. Paul Marshallʼs war profiteering and
particularly good. She Robbieʼs experiences in France are far from accidental, not to
need not judge. There mention the symbolic linkage of the Meissen vase to World War I.
did not have to be a
moral. She need only
show separate minds,
as alive as her own,
struggling with the idea
that other minds were
equally alive."
