Atonement - Detailed summary - Part one

Page 1

Chapter 1

Briony Tallis written play she intends to perform with cousins for older brother Leon on his return home from their country estate

Briony has passion for writing - considers herself to have talent and promise

Cousins 15 year old Lola and twins Pierrot and Jackson refugees from broken home staying in Tallis household while freckless mother is in Paris with new lover

Rehearsals for play quickly disappoint and frustrate Briony as Lola takes lead role Briony has written for herself and boys prove at first reluctant and inept

Novel opens with Briony Tallis, youngest daughter of civil servant father and semi-invalid mother awaiting arrival of visiting cousins and older brother

Family lives in solid large house in English countryside with servants and land

Very hot day in summer 1935

Briony witten play - melodrama

Intends to perform with 3 cousins to impress brother

Has previously written stories she shared with family

Parents, sister and brother praised and encouraged her work

Briony reveals in what she sees as her success as writer

Experiments with new words read in dictionary and thesaurus

Examples of her inexpert use of these given, inviting us to laugh gently

Briony's real life uneventful and isolated

Doesn't have any secrets or anyone to keep them from

She would like to have

Instead pours energies into writing and imagining

Thirst for real drama in life shapes later events

As soon as cousins arrives Briony tries to drag off to rehearse play

Briony mother, Emily and elder sister Cecelia intervene to give cousins gentler welcome

By late afternoon all 4 children in library

Briony struggles to get twin boys interested in project

Briony assumed she would have lead role

Ends up giving to Lola and resenting it

Lola tries to behave as much as an adult as she can

Threatening and confusing to younger Briony

She doesn't always know how to respond to her

Twins not capable of saying lines in dramatic style Briony would like

Chapter ends on tense note as they are 'steadily wrecking Briony's creation' (p17) until called away for bath

Page 2

Commentary

Although events related by anonymous third person narrator voice in many passages is Briony

She is central character of early part of book and one who will seek 'atonement' of title

Only at very end do we discover whole story being told by older briony

See hints of Briony's literary ambition in phrases such as 'a two-day tempest of composition' and 'the distant north' (p3)

Cliché from type of children's books she would have spent hours reading

Style which characterises passages presented from Briony's POV is self-regarding, ostentatiously 'literary' and often flamboyant

By end of first page full extravagant extent of literary pretensions been laid in outline of melodrama - The Trials of Arabella

Active imagination demonstrated again as she fantasises about effect play will have on brother

She wants it to guide him to suitable bride who would make Briony bridesmaid

Performance doesn't take place

In advance play will not reach fulfilment

McEwan breaks chronological flow of narrative and frustrates natural keenness to see what will happen

At many key points of novel and several minor we are told how things will turn out

Undermines dramatic tension

Has effect of forcing us to focus on how events and characters affect one another

Already know what will happen so turn our attention to what will happen how events lead to one another and why they turn out as they do

- Major concerns of book