Atonement By Ian Mcew Literary Analysis
"It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value," (McEwan 38). Atonement is a novel written by Ian McEwan about a young girl named Briony who struggles with defining between reality and her imagination. Due to this she falsely accuses her sister’s lover, Robbie Turner, and must face the consequences that follow as she grows older. There are many versions of reality throughout the novel that show the different thoughts and opinions of how each character views their life. McEwan uses the factors of age,
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She is a creative author who holds imagination at a high position and believes that the life she lives in is created by herself. “Everything connected. It was her discovery. It was her story, the one that was writing itself around her” (McEwan 166). Briony’s play The Trials of Arabella is an embodiment of the reality she wishes to live in. She had complete control when she wrote the main character to reflect her own personality so that she could portray Arabella when performing the play. The play is an incarnation of the internal world she lives in because of how she does not know what is outside the walls. The fictionalizations and secrets that she loves to think about are the causes for the tragedy in the story. Her false accusation of Robbie was an assumption she made based off of the few encounters she had with Robbie and Cecelia. She only sees but does not hear what happens at the fountain and in the library and she only sees the words written in the letter from Robbie to Cecelia. Her understanding of these events between Cecelia and Robbie is minimal due to her limited exposure to the real world. Because of her wild fantasies and assumptions she damaged Cecelia and Robbie’s relationship and her own familial relations. Grown-up Briony utilizes her imagination once more to repair those damages by using her imagination to fix the real reality she lives in into a
She is a creative author who holds imagination at a high position and believes that the life she lives in is created by herself. “Everything connected. It was her discovery. It was her story, the one that was writing itself around her” (McEwan 166). Briony’s play The Trials of Arabella is an embodiment of the reality she wishes to live in. She had complete control when she wrote the main character to reflect her own personality so that she could portray Arabella when performing the play. The play is an incarnation of the internal world she lives in because of how she does not know what is outside the walls. The fictionalizations and secrets that she loves to think about are the causes for the tragedy in the story. Her false accusation of Robbie was an assumption she made based off of the few encounters she had with Robbie and Cecelia. She only sees but does not hear what happens at the fountain and in the library and she only sees the words written in the letter from Robbie to Cecelia. Her understanding of these events between Cecelia and Robbie is minimal due to her limited exposure to the real world. Because of her wild fantasies and assumptions she damaged Cecelia and Robbie’s relationship and her own familial relations. Grown-up Briony utilizes her imagination once more to repair those damages by using her imagination to fix the real reality she lives in into a