Atonement By Ian Mcewan

Judging Lines Between Reality and Imagination in Atonement
As I read Atonement, by Ian McEwan, on the beach in Long Beach Island I was confronted with a somewhat new style of writing that I did not recognize. The splitting of the novel into three main parts only made sense to me after I had finished it; the account of the crime that took place at the Tallis household, Robbie Turner’s adventures at war, and Briony’s tales as a nurse were all connected and ended up “coming together” much more smoothly than I had anticipated. The characters Briony, Robbie, Cecilia, and Lola are all faced with very different problems which all have the same fundamental root: the attacks on Lola and the “attack” on Cecilia. Briony is only 13 when the novel begins.
“With the letter, something elemental, brutal, perhaps even criminal had been introduced, some principle of darkness, and even in her excitement over the possibilities, she did not doubt that her sister was in some way threatened and would need her help” (106). Briony is clearly deeply affected by the contents of this letter. “That the word had been written by a man confessing to an image in his mind, confiding a lonely preoccupation, disgusted her profoundly” (107). Briony felt there was “danger contained by such crudity” and that it “threatened the order of their household”
She failed to recognize that what she caught a quick glimpse of, may not actually have looked as it seemed. She used prejudgments she had on people to determine what she saw. I think this has to do with her strong imagination, because I feel at times throughout Atonement Briony was confused on the lines between reality and fiction. Sometimes she did not consider the outcomes to her actions and made mistakes because of them. Her strong imagination you could say persuaded her actions in reality. The events that occur in reality have much stronger repercussions then those in an imagination. As a 13 year old Briony had trouble understanding this, and mad many