Writer, Ian McEwan, in his novel “Atonement”, richly explores the controlling ideas of guilt

and especially its detrimental effects, mainly through the character of Briony - whose naively

and desire for control would leads her to impose her narrow minded beliefs onto Lola’s

assault and accuse Robbie. As a result, Briony attempts to ostensibly atone for her guilt

through the fabricated story of Robbie and Cecilia - which we can understand as her means

to escape atonement, limit her guilt and forgive herself.

From the onset of the novel Briony was consistently proven to be naive yet having this

strong desire for control. Preliminarily, it is Briony’s false accusation of Robbie that leads to

her guilt, one of her earliest characteristics portrays Briony as the same child “possessed by

a desire to have the world just-so”. This use of “possessed” carries an eerie diction that

captures the same inseparable but negative quality about her; and this haunting metaphor is

further calcified by the fact that “Briony’s [room] was a shrine to her controlling demons” -

clearly an attempt by McEwan to assign the same demonic attribute that will persist to follow

her to her accusation of Robbie. Perhaps by labeling Briony with these traits, McEwan tries

to blend her guilt of desiring perfection and control as evil, harmful to others - all is a way to

dramatically foreshadow how this sense of control will lead to her falsely accusing Robbie.

Interestingly, this motif of wanting the “world just to” echoes across the entirely of the first

part, whether desiring things to be “symmetrical” or that she describes the “freckles” of Lola

as “blemishes” that are “virtually fluorescent” and too “hard to conceal”. This blunt

characterisation of freckles as something flamed like “blemishes” overtly reveals and

reinforces her obsession with having an ideal world and wanting control. But stepping away

from present Briony, even the Briony of 1999 buttresses this desire for control describing

“writing” - her role as narrator in the novel - as a form of “soaring” and an “achievable form of

flight, of fancy, of imagination” this free imagery of “soaring” grasp just how much Briony

desires control, seeing it no different as having freedom. It is undeniable that across the first

part we are shown time and time that Briony flourishes in having power which would

eventually lead to her crime.

It is because of this desire that Briony imposes her narrow minded beliefs onto Lola’s

assault, falsely accusing Robbie as a way to maintain her control of the situation.

Disturbingly, “her cousin’s distress” seemed to give Briony” a state of restlessness, an

agitation close to “joy” that gave her “her own sense of power”. Here, Briony reveals her true

colors, enjoying this dominance that she has and entrenching it by making accusations that

“it was Robbie”, “[she] saw him”. Her cold accusations are largely a result of her selfishly

imposing her own beliefs that Robbie is the same “incarnation of evil” almost parallel to her

own characterisation and that he was a “disgusting mind” It is from this point of the narrative

that Briony’s guilt begins, when she realizes that it was “easy to set everything wrong,

completely wrong”. The use of this epiphora to respect “wrong” isolates it at the end of each

clause, squeezing the reader into this echoing and poignant atmosphere that punishes us for

Briony’s crime. This metafictional intrusion by future Briony only further captures the guilt she

feels and will continue to feel, in the future.

From this guilt, Briony has chosen to atone, to create a narrative in which Robbie and Cecilia

live on together when the reader finds out that most of part two is all fabricated by Briony.

Perhaps we may feel a sense of betrayal, that everything was all a lie - but this is now

Briony’s attempt to atone, to “[give] them their happiness” to let them “live and untie” and

have their happy war after. It is this makeup narrative that McEwan uses to help us

understand Briony's guilt and the long lasting nature of it - especially because Robbie would

die of a bomb in the “18th october”. Guilt is undeniably everywhere, from Robbie’s breaking

at the vase at the fountain to Lola’s miscommunication at her rape, but what makes guilt

especially destructive for Briony is the fact that it was caused by an innate quality of hers to

have the world perfectly “just so”, it was a result of Briony’s inherent character that

imprisoned and killed Robbie, as well as destroying the relationship between Robbie and

Cecila - all because she is unable to see other characters with thoughts and characteristics

different to her ignorant, “childish”, selfish views. This guilt is what matures Birony, in the

end, when she gets her “first weak intimation” that the world is no longer “fairy-tale castles

and princesses” but rather the “real, adult world”. An over dramatized perception of maturing.

Yet, Briony selfishness persists, on a closer reading, it seems that her ostensible atonement

is really an escape from it. Across the novel, Briony appears to be constantly justifying her

actions, that “guilt” was “cheap”, “everyone is guilty, and no one is”, which is seemingly

illogical as she desperately tries to convince herself that she does not need to atone. After

all, “no one would be redeemed by a change to evidence” - a way for her to avoid confessing

to her crimes. In fact, she even extends the argument to the idea that there “weren’t enough

people, enough papers and pens, enough patience and peace” to change the past.

Whatever “skivvying” or “nursing” she did, Briony “would never undo the damage” and have

to forever live with a thin guilt. In this response, the story she makes is a move to escape

from atoning, a way to limit her own self-guilt. If Cecilia would never forgive her then letting

them live happily together would only alleviate her own selfish desire to atone.

Perhaps the false accusation of Robbie detrimental to his life, the guilt that Briony lives with

may be equally destructive to herself - forcing her to seek escapism to an unattainable crime

in an effort to limit self guilt. The irony of the novel’s title is that no character truly atone for

their action and everyone perpetually carries this baggage of guilt with them to death - just

as Briony will only publish the narrative when she dies. Her belief that as long as a “single

copy, a solitary typescript” of her story surrives, her “fortuitous sister and her medical prince”

live and “flourish” therefore becomes her final remark to escape her atonement and forgive

herself.

Guilt may be everywhere, with every character, but McEwan emphasizes how destructive

guilt is, facing coping individuals like Briony to escape atonement, even if creating a lie, a

new past