The story and analysis of the book.

1. Ian McEwan
1948 - now
Kees IJzerman
June 2014

2. Ian McEwan
• Early stories: grisly
Example: The Cement Garden
• Later: ordinary lives affected
Example: Enduring Love
• “Open the wrong door and you step into a
nightmare”
• What if?
What if people made different choices?

3. Atonement, part 1
• Tallis family;
Briony: 13 yrs old; writes play
Cecilia (“Cee”): older sister
• Robbie = Son of housekeeper, in love with Cee
• Fountain scene

4. Atonement, fountain scene
• Fountain scene

5. Atonement, part 1
• Briony (vivid imagination) sees scene
• Interprets it romantically, perhaps erotically
• Robbie writes Cee a letter, telling her he loves
her.
• He asks Briony to deliver it for him
• But: WRONG letter! A very dirty one!
• Briony of course reads it and finds it perverse.

6. Atonement, part 1
• Robbie comes to the house.
• He and Cee make love in the library.
• This too is witnessed by Briony.
• She mistakes the love-making for rape.

7. Atonement, part 1
• Robbie has turned into an evil pervert in
Briony’s mind
• When she goes out of the house at night, she
sees her cousin Lola being raped. She accuses
Robbie, who had nothing to do with it.
• Robbie is arrested.

8. Atonement, part 2
• Five years later
• Robbie in the army after prison
• Dunkirk
• Robbie severely wounded
• Goes home to Cecilia

9. Atonement, Dunkirk
• Dunkirk

10. Atonement, part 3
• Still during the war:
• Briony is a nurse. She does this mainly to
atone for her sin of wrongly accusing Robbie
• Briony visits her sister.
• Cee and Robbie instruct her on how she can
clear Robbie’s name

11. Atonement, Instructions
• Briony begs sorry and gets instructions

12. Atonement, part 4
• Almost 60 years later, 1999
• Everything we have read till now was told by
Briony.
• She is dying
• Briony made up the part about visiting Cecilia and
Robbie
• In reality Robbie had died on the beach of
Dunkirk
• Cecilia died while hiding for an air-raid in a tube
station.

13. Atonement, the ending
• Ending

14. Atonement
• All of a sudden the book turns out to be a
frame-story.
• Briony seeks atonement, forgiveness
– From the reader?
– From her sister and Robbie?
– From herself?
• The book is ultimately about storytelling.