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Essay / Summary and Main Themes of the Novel Atonement
Ian McEwan depicts a theme of architectural detail throughout his novel Atonement. Through the use of these descriptions, McEwan constructs the theme of guilt and the quest for atonement that continues through his main character, Briony Tallis. Briony, who is a writer, writes these architectural details in an attempt to cleanse herself of her guilt and find atonement for the misunderstanding that is ruining the lives of her sister, Cecilia Tallis, and Robbie Turner, Cecilia's lover and the accused rapist. McEwan creates a novel of distorted reality by interweaving the creative acts of literature and architecture. The mixture of creative acts in literature and architectural details serve as a guide for Briony as she begins to understand the crime she has committed. Ultimately, Briony's novel distorts the reality of events in her life in an attempt to obtain the forgiveness she craves. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay McEwan makes Briony's attempt to find atonement evident in Part II through his references to the French countryside, where Robbie takes refuge during the war. . On their arrival in the countryside, Robbie and Nettle, a business companion, took refuge in “a bombed house whose cellar was half open to the sky and had the appearance of a gigantic cave”. Grabbing him by his jacket, Nettle pulled him down a scree of broken bricks. Carefully, he guided him across the cellar floor into the darkness” (McEwan 244). McEwan shows that these lines are a manuscript of Briony's attempted atonement. Because of this description, McEwan was able to use the allusion when he transformed Robbie into someone who looks like Jesus. While Briony sacrificed Robbie to the police due to his childish naivety and selfishness, it led to his ultimate destruction in that cellar. To further symbolize Robbie's innocence, Nettle places Robbie in his cave tomb in a seaside village in France, just as Joseph did for Jesus. This reflects Briony's realization that distorting the reality of Robbie's role does not bring redemption to the existence of her daily life. In the third part of the novel, McEwan demonstrates Briony's guilt towards Cecilia and shows her attempt at forgiveness with her sister through Briony's descriptions. uses in the details of his sister's departure lounge. As Briony never gets the chance to visit her sister, McEwan takes the opportunity to depict the scene from the perspective and imagination of a guilty conscience. When McEwan said, "The walls were papered in a pattern of pale vertical stripes, like those of a boy's pajamas, which reinforced the feeling of confinement," this imprisonment symbolizes the imprisonment that Robbie is forced to do. face in prison, as well as the prison that Briony created. for her sister and herself. As she built a wall of lies that separated Cecilia from the man she loves, this causes Briony to separate from Cecilia and Robbie. McEwan depicts guilt in this way to set up Briony's attempt to gain atonement through action. McEwan allows Briony to act for redress by making the imaginative novelist realize that she is a path to redemption. By giving her this path, Briony can write her sister and Robbie a happy ending that they deserved at the end of her novel. The idea of the two lovers finding each other reinforces the "happily ever after" and simplicity of a life that Briony could have given her sister and Robbie if only she had told the truth, but that is now only possible. 'through his novel. Keep in mind: This is just a sample., 2001.