Atonement Vs Reality Essay

Atonement, written by Ian McEwan in 2001, is about an upper-class family and revolves primarily around 3 characters: Robbie, Cecilia, and Briony. Cecilia and Briony are upper-class children of Jack Tallis who is, presumably, a high-ranking government official. Robbie is the gardener who lives, free of charge, with his mother on Jack Tallis’ grounds in a cabin. He is childhood friends with Cecilia and gets his university education paid for by Jack Tallis. However, at university, he and Cecilia do not speak. Then, once they are back home, Robbie and Cecilia act awkwardly towards one another until they end up nearly having sex in the library of the house—nearly since Briony walks in and interrupts. Robbie is then accused of rape by Briony and
McEwan presents us with two versions of many situations because he is trying to illustrate how different people have different, subjective, versions of reality, and that though some realities are more accurate than others, none of them actually are the objective reality.

The trials of Arabella serve as a metaphor for the book, and to illustrate how Briony does not realize the consequences of her actions. In the trials, Briony can easily control everything about her story. This connects to the novel because Briony wants Lola’s rape to be “her own discovery” and as such, lies and creates “her story” (166); when Briony is at the site of the rape, she says that “everything connected. It was her own discovery. It was her story, the one that was writing itself around her. ‘It was Robbie, wasn’t it’ (…) Briony said it again, this time without the trace of a question. It was a statement of fact. ‘It was Robbie’ ” (166). Briony is giving herself the role of Fortune, or rather ill-fortune, and punishing Robbie who she thinks is the “wicked count” (3) so that Cecilia may meet her “impoverished doctor" (3). Briony wants reality to make sense and “fit” together much like it