Research Paper On Atonement
Critique, 52:74–100, 2011
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0011-1619 print/1939-9138 online
DOI: 10.1080/00111610903380154
Briony’s Being-For:
Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan’s Atonement
DAVID K. O’H ARA
ABSTRACT: This essay attempts to identify an unusual brand of self-conscious narrative by focusing on Ian McEwan’s novel, Atonement (1992). What makes this minority metafictional style especially unique is not only its presence in the work of one of the late twentieth century’s preeminent British novelists, but also its ethical character. For this reason, the kind of metafiction being discussed should not be conflated with more traditionally ideological forms that attest to their own fictionality in the name of undermining …show more content…
Distraught and humiliated by their retreat to the beaches of France, a group of army soldiers are found loosing their frustrations on the lone pilot. We are told that “everyone had suffered, and now someone was going to pay” (Atonement 251). Bearing witness to the gradual fomentation of displaced hatred is Robbie Turner. “It was madness to go to the man’s defence,” acknowledges the narrator, “[yet] it was loathsome not to” (252). So Turner lingers at the sidelines, suppressing his instinct to intervene, to remind his fellow troops that the RAF pilot “was a man, not a rabbit to be skinned” (252). Struck by the man’s placidity in the face of danger, he finds himself wavering. The decision to act is ruthlessly left up to him.
It was eerie that the man had not shouted for help, or pleaded, or protested his innocence. His silence seemed like a collusion in his fate. Was he so dim that it had not occurred to him that he might be about to die? Sensibly he had folded his glasses into his pocket. Without them his face was empty [: : : ]
He peered around at his tormentors, his lips had parted, more in disbelief than in an attempt to form a word. …show more content…
Though Turner (as Robbie is referred to throughout
Part II) feels compelled to act, he also feels the pressure of the mob to forget that mortal face and objectify the pilot. He understands their need to simplify their sorry situation by locating a scapegoat, by choosing to see the RAF man as no more than what his uniform, at that moment, represents. Turner even recognizes that he could, if he gave in to the will of the mob, “do something outrageous with his bowie knife and earn the love of a hundred men” (echoing, perhaps, a type of love Briony could not herself resist earlier in the novel)
(252). He sympathizes with their need to turn the incomprehensibility of the war into something all too comprehensible: the Other—in this case the RAF man—is stereotyped, scapegoated into being the cause of all that has been suffered. At the expense of his identity, a role has been imposed upon him.
He is not another mind, he is not a face, he is a straw man, an “it” with a preconceived role. Using what Ian McEwan, in another historical context,
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0011-1619 print/1939-9138 online
DOI: 10.1080/00111610903380154
Briony’s Being-For:
Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan’s Atonement
DAVID K. O’H ARA
ABSTRACT: This essay attempts to identify an unusual brand of self-conscious narrative by focusing on Ian McEwan’s novel, Atonement (1992). What makes this minority metafictional style especially unique is not only its presence in the work of one of the late twentieth century’s preeminent British novelists, but also its ethical character. For this reason, the kind of metafiction being discussed should not be conflated with more traditionally ideological forms that attest to their own fictionality in the name of undermining …show more content…
Distraught and humiliated by their retreat to the beaches of France, a group of army soldiers are found loosing their frustrations on the lone pilot. We are told that “everyone had suffered, and now someone was going to pay” (Atonement 251). Bearing witness to the gradual fomentation of displaced hatred is Robbie Turner. “It was madness to go to the man’s defence,” acknowledges the narrator, “[yet] it was loathsome not to” (252). So Turner lingers at the sidelines, suppressing his instinct to intervene, to remind his fellow troops that the RAF pilot “was a man, not a rabbit to be skinned” (252). Struck by the man’s placidity in the face of danger, he finds himself wavering. The decision to act is ruthlessly left up to him.
It was eerie that the man had not shouted for help, or pleaded, or protested his innocence. His silence seemed like a collusion in his fate. Was he so dim that it had not occurred to him that he might be about to die? Sensibly he had folded his glasses into his pocket. Without them his face was empty [: : : ]
He peered around at his tormentors, his lips had parted, more in disbelief than in an attempt to form a word. …show more content…
Though Turner (as Robbie is referred to throughout
Part II) feels compelled to act, he also feels the pressure of the mob to forget that mortal face and objectify the pilot. He understands their need to simplify their sorry situation by locating a scapegoat, by choosing to see the RAF man as no more than what his uniform, at that moment, represents. Turner even recognizes that he could, if he gave in to the will of the mob, “do something outrageous with his bowie knife and earn the love of a hundred men” (echoing, perhaps, a type of love Briony could not herself resist earlier in the novel)
(252). He sympathizes with their need to turn the incomprehensibility of the war into something all too comprehensible: the Other—in this case the RAF man—is stereotyped, scapegoated into being the cause of all that has been suffered. At the expense of his identity, a role has been imposed upon him.
He is not another mind, he is not a face, he is a straw man, an “it” with a preconceived role. Using what Ian McEwan, in another historical context,