Complete summary Atonement book, Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica Complete summary Atonement book e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! ATONEMENT SUMMARY SUMMARY EPIGRAPH: As an introduction to Atonement, McEwan cites a passage from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817). In it, Catherine Moreland's boyfriend, Mr. Tilney, admonishes her for dreaming up a fantastical scenario in which his father has either murdered or imprisoned his wife. Mr. Tilney finds Catherine's suspicions improbable within the close-knit, upper-class community to which they all belong. "Remember that we are English: that we are Christians."  By quoting from Northanger Abbey, McEwan's epigraph prepares the reader for a novel about mistaken suspicions within the upper-class community of British society. Briony Tallis is similar to Catherine in that she is prone to fabricating melodramatic fantasies about the people around her. + McEwan alludes to Northanger Abbey again in Part 4 of Atonement. The name of the hotel the Tallis house becomes is Tilney's Hotel. PART ONE Briony Tallis is a literary, self-important 13-year-old who lives in an English country estate in 1935. Her cousins, 15-year-old Lola Quincey and 9-year-old twins Jackson and Pierrot Quincey, are coming to stay with the Tallises because their parents are embroiled in a divorce. Meanwhile, Briony’s older sister Cecilia holds unresolved romantic feelings for Robbie Turner, the Tallises’ gardener (Robbie’s romantic feelings for Cecilia, meanwhile, are passionately resolved). Thanks to the Tallises’ funding, Robbie studies with Cecilia at Cambridge and plans to become a doctor. From a window of the estate, Briony witnesses the two of them accidentally break a family heirloom vase in front of a fountain. When Cecilia removes her clothes in front of Robbie to retrieve the shards from the fountain, Briony starts to think Robbie is a threat to her sister. Later, Robbie gives Briony a letter of apology to give to Cecilia, but accidentally hands her a vulgar draft instead. Briony reads the letter and becomes convinced Robbie is a menace. When Robbie realizes his error, he goes to Cecilia to apologize. This apology turns to passionate lovemaking in the family library. Briony enters the room and interrupts, further cementing her resentment and suspicion of Robbie. The family gathers for a dinner to commemorate the visit of Leon, the oldest Tallis child. He has brought a friend, Paul Marshall, with him. Paul is the heir to a chocolate fortune. The twins leave the dinner table and leave a letter behind explaining they have run away from the house because they miss their parents. The guests assemble search parties to look for the boys on the grounds. Briony, searching alone, finds Lola being raped in a remote part of the estate. The assailant runs away before Briony can identify him, but as she consoles Lola, she convinces both Lola and herself that she saw Robbie commit the crime. Briony leads Lola back to the house and delivers her story to all the adults present. Policemen arrive and Briony testifies that she saw Robbie commit the crime. After many hours, Robbie returns to the house with the twins; he had been searching for them alone all night. When he gets back, he is taken into police custody. PART TWO Resumes after Robbie has served three and a half years in prison for Lola’s assault. During that time, he has been in constant correspondence with Cecilia, even though she has not been allowed to visit him in person. She has cut ties with her family and started a career as a nurse. Cecilia’s latest letter informs Robbie that Briony has contacted her in the hopes of retracting the false testimony she made years earlier. The outbreak of World War II allows Robbie to end his sentence by enlisting in the army. He goes to fight in France. When Part Two begins, he must walk to the coast with his comrades Corporal Nettle and Corporal Mace in order to evacuate with the British forces. During this walk, the men behold disturbing carnage. Despite having a painful shrapnel (=scheggia di proiettile) wound, Robbie makes it to the coast and is evacuated. PART THREE Focuses on Briony, who has foregone college to work as a nurse during the war. Work is demanding, and she is intimidated by her overseer, Nurse Drummond. An influx of injured men from the French evacuation arrives to the hospital, and the harrowing experience of treating them causes Briony to mature. In her rare free time, Briony writes stories, which she submits to magazines unsuccessfully. A letter from her father informs Briony that Paul and Lola are to be married. She attends their wedding and, afterwards, pays a visit to Cecilia. Unexpectedly, Robbie is present as well. The atmosphere is tense, but Briony agrees to take the steps necessary to alert her family and the relevant legal authorities of her change in testimony. Cecilia and Robbie see Briony off, and Briony understands that after she finishes the tasks she agreed to, she must begin an in-depth process of “atonement.” The book’s epilogue reveals that this atonement process was to write the preceding novel itself. Briony, now 77, narrates in the first person. She has just been diagnosed with irreversible dementia. She describes going to a library to donate her correspondence with Corporal Nettle—used to write this book—and afterwards attends a birthday party thrown by her surviving relatives, including Pierrot and Leon. While Briony longs to publish her memoir, she cannot do so while Paul and Lola remain alive. They are now well-connected socialites and will doubtless sue her for libel. Briony admits that her novelization has changed some details—for example, Robbie and Cecilia both actually perished in the war, but her fiction allowed them to live—but she reflects that even though achieving atonement will be impossible for her, her attempt to do so is indispensable. THEMES 1) PERSPECTIVE: The most essential theme of Atonement is the way an individual’s perspective inevitably shapes his or her reality. At various points throughout the novel, McEwan filters the narrative through a particular character’s point of view. By juxtaposing the distinct, and frequently conflicting, ways his characters understand the world, the author illustrates that each individual’s reality is as much a product of their own biases, assumptions, and limited knowledge as it is a reflection of an objective, external truth. The most powerful and consequential example of perspective influencing reality is Briony’s inaccurate incrimination of Robbie. 2) GUILT - atonement: As the book’s title suggests, guilt is a primary theme of Atonement. After she realizes the damage that her callous testimony has wrought, Briony spends a lifetime burdened by her guilt and attempting to atone for her misdeeds. Instead of going to college, she becomes a nurse, perhaps sensing a duty to help soldiers like Robbie. + her mother should have known that was Paul the rapist bc she “knows everything” + Lola should have spoken up instead of letting briony speak for her + Robbie should have not written those obscene words She wishes she could have been brave enough to apologize personally to Cecilia, so she fabricates a visit to her sister (+ her lover) + the sense of guiltiness is represented also by the BOOK that she writes in order to be atoned 3) CLASS: The tension that drives the book’s early plot is the scandalous love affair between the wealthy, well-bred Cecilia Tallis and the low-class Robbie Turner, the son of one of her family’s servants. Although Robbie has been largely incorporated into the Tallis family, both by growing up alongside the Tallis children and by enjoying a stellar education sponsored by the family, he is nevertheless an outsider. Robbie’s future depends on the charity of the Tallises. His outsider status undeniably contributes to the swift and uncompromising isolation he experiences after Briony accuses him of raping Lola. 4) THE UNCHANGEABLE PAST: The most important plot developments in the work stem from actions or experiences that can never be erased or counteracted. Once Briony testifies against Robbie, she takes on a responsibility for Robbie’s fate that she will never be able to shed, and she loses an innocence that she will never be able to regain 5) STORIES AND LITERATURE: The end of the book reveals that all of Atonement is a semi-autobiographical novel that Briony has written decades after her youthful mistakes took place. This framing device gives new signifying power to the self- conscious storytelling and narration that appear throughout the plot. As Briony grows up, her approach to storytelling evolves to reflect her maturity as a human being 6) The novel seems at first to be written from a THIRD-PERSON OMNISCIENT point of view, but it is not until the end of Part 4 that the reader understands that the narrator is Briony herself, who many years later has become the novelist she always dreamed of being as a child. Third-person omniscient narration distances the reader from the characters, so it is as if mature Briony wishes to distance herself from the youthful version of herself she clinically describes in her novel. McEwan chooses this point of view because he wants the reader to judge young Briony, just as mature Briony does. If the novel as a whole is Briony's atonement for her youthful misjudgement, then this first chapter sets up some reasons—but not excuses— for her having acted the way she did > at the beginning of the novel the narrator is UNRELIABLE bc she is NAÏVE, but at the end she is UNRELIABLE for CHOICE bc she is making up the final of Cecilia and Robbie 7) EXPECTATION versus REALITY: the writer McEwan, in some cases, wants to show the REALITY of the SCENE (ex.: scene of fountain > POV of Briony and then the REALITY of THINGS) => MULTIPLE POVs 8) ORDER versus CHAOS: the contrast btw order, and chaos appears all throughout atonement - Briony’s room: tidy > her absolute need for control - Cecilia’s room: messy > it represents chaos - Robbie: studious > orderly life as a doctor > he meets Cecilia: a bit of chaos Briony understand that she is not suited to be a playwright bc she doesn’t have complete control over the situation, her fiction => she rejects chaos of playwright, and she dedicates only on novel writing so that she can writes her own story. The WWII breaks down the military order  Robbie dies Briony takes the ultimate control of the story inventing the last events deciding that she could give herself atonement. But the author gives her the final punishment: DEMENTIA => mental chaos unrecoverable + at the same time, it’s a sort of ESCAPE from what she did: she starts to forgetting things: it’s peaceful IMPORTANCE of the WRITTEN WORLD: Memory: - To remember of the past things - Atonement (book): she writes for giving the 2 lovers the best finale 9) POWER of WORDS: the most powerful words in the first part are OBSCENE WORD and MANIAC = both change Briony’s innocent opinion of Robbie but she doesn’t consider him dangerous until she reads the letter + Lola calls him “maniac” => she repeats these words until she believes them Part 2: Cecilia’s words are comfortable for Robbie when he is in war + prison > power to keep him alive = she uses the same words she has used after his nightmare “Come back” Part 4: in the final part Briony has achieved the ultimate power by becoming a celebrated author > words are source of her power => SHE BUILDS AN ENTIRE WORLD. She wants ATONEMENT but she doesn’t have the power to give herself 10) CHILDHOOD versus ADULTHOOD: Briony doesn’t know what love is > she is unable to understand what is going on btw Robbie and Cecilia + Lola that wants to be an adult  Lola is the type of girl that wants to become an adult (ex.: when she reproaches her twins for their behaviour)