Setting
,Setting
1. The Tallis home (1935) 🌳
● The country house setting is a typical English crime fiction setting
● Provides crime writers with a sealed-off world of wealth and privilege and provides the
readers with the thrill of watching the dark secrets of the upper classes be brought to light.
⛲️
● The dinner was very awkward- “asphyxiating silence”- tension.
~ the temple/triton fountain ~
● The crumbling temple serves as a metaphor for the family’s own decline in social statutes and
morals. Its fading grandeur mirrors the corruption in the family.
● The temple is described as ‘the orphan of a grand society’, reflecting Briony’s feelings of being
an isolated child.
● The temple is the setting for the climax of the novel, linking it directly to the events that
Briony misinterprets, making it a focal point for her ‘sorry air’ of guilt that she later feels.
● The Triton fountain has a dark history- until the late 18th century, unidentified dead bodies
were displayed in front of it and the people of Rome were invited to try and recognise them.
This signifies that it is a place of metaphorical death. Something dies inside Lola, Briony,
Robbie and Cecilia that day.
2. France (1940) 💌
● Northern France during the British retreat to Dunkirk
● May be considered an unusual setting for a crime text, but Robbie’s perspective encourages us
to reflect on war as a crime against humanity.
● We see how modern warfare can destroy innocent civilian lives in an instant- war
dehumanises all involved.
● The scene in the bar demonstrates how even someone as fair-minded as Robbie can feel the
‘exhilaration’ of being part of the mob who vent their frustrations on the RAF man as the
trauma of war removes ‘any remaining sense of individual responsibility’. (P252)
3. London (1940) ⛑️
● The hospital setting explores the horrors of war. The lengthy description of Briony’s first 24
hours tending to the wounded arriving from Dunkirk is an intense and moving passage.
● The setting provides moments of tenderness (Briony comforting Luc Cornet) and horror.
● The reference to ‘sodden crumbs of Amo bars’ in the hospital reminds us of Marshall’s crimes
(rape of Lola and exploitation of war).
● Briony doesn’t make an explicit comparison, but perhaps we should consider that her decision
to lie to the dying Luc is similar to her decision to lie to the reader. Readers may react
negatively to being manipulated and begin to question other parts of the narrative.
4. London (1999) 👵
● The Tallis home is now Tilney’s hotel, representing a whole lifetime of guilt for Briony (now 77
years old).
- ‘The same but different’- reflects Briony’s life in which she has had to mask her guilt but
underneath is rotten; the hotel has tried to change but the rooms are still the same, the bridge
is still there, the family portrait remains etc.
,
,Themes & AoC
,Key themes 📖
Atonement and guilt
● Two main crimes: the attack on Lola and Briony’s act of bearing false witness. The rape is a shadowy
event while Briony’s perjury is explored.
● Briony writing the novel again and again is her act of atonement; she ruins lives and faces a lifetime of
guilt for it. In Briony’s defence are her youth, her innocent (foolish) motives and the lack of real
opportunity she had to retract her evidence once the adults had begun to act on her statement. Her
clearest act of guilt is when she was given a clear chance to change her evidence and still says ‘Yes, I saw
him. I saw him.’ (p181)
● Paul is obviously guilty, but Lola is also guilty by choosing to remain silent about who attacked her. In
Briony’s certainty, she finds a chance to escape the humiliation and difficulty of accusing Paul (or
accounting for herself if she was initially a willing partner). Arguably, they are more culpable than
Briony since they know Robbie is not the attacker.
● Briony’s family bear some responsibility since they should recognise her love of drama and
attention-seeking behaviour.
● Guilt extends through the novel in the war where no one remains innocent. Robbie feels guilty for the
people he has not saved. Everyone is guilty by omission if not commission, sending a message of social
responsibility. Robbie is generally set apart from the trend of guilt through inactivity by his tendency to
take decisive action which extends a message to society- ‘You’ve killed no one today? But how many did
you leave to die?’ (p261)
War and conflict
● In P1, the impending war casts a shadow over the action. The life depicted is fragile and we have a sense
of imminent destruction, adding to the elusive quality.
● In P2 & 3 we see horrific depictions of war which make Paul’s plan to profit from it look particularly
repellent.
● WWII also removes the last vestiges of the traditional social structure. The new social order is
exemplified in the West Indian taxi driver who confounds Briony’s out-dated expectations.
Writing and imagination
● The process of writing itself is a central concern- the novel is an extended study of its own composition.
● The novel is also about the making of a writer; we see Briony’s imaginative awakening. She realises that
she needs to start writing more ‘of what passed between people’. Writing involves more than imagining
other consciousnesses though and Briony goes overboard when she decides to ditch story-telling
completely to follow the stream of consciousness. Briony does eventually succeed as a critically
acclaimed novelist, but she writes and rewrites this story because it is the one that really matters to her.
- For Briony to succeed as a novelist she has to be able to imagine herself inside the consciousness of
another and she finally achieves this in Atonement.
Truth and memory
● Working out what is true is a central problem. It isn’t true that Robbie raped Lola, but to an extent it is
true that Briony believed he did. Her beliefs have been moulded by her inability to separate fact from
fiction.
● There are different types of untruth in the novel; Lola and Paul are blatantly untruthful and thus it is not
explored. There are other lapses of memory and understanding too, such as Emily thinking Paul is good
with children and Cecilia and Robbie’s conviction that Danny Hardman was the rapist- potentially
Briony does this to reinforce her own innocence. She is not the only one to misinterpret events.
, ● In a novel that claims to be constructed from events remembered from the past, memory is entwined
with truth. Has Briony remembered accurately? Has she lied? Sometimes she acknowledges that she
doesn’t remember (p41).
● In the epilogue, Briony reviews the advice she’s had about the accuracy of military history, reflecting that
this isn’t what the novel is about. May raising this issue, McEwan makes us look closely at other details,
some of which are accurate and some which aren’t (e.g. the illustration no. in Robbie’s copy of Gray’s
Anatomy). This alerts us to the possibility that they are deliberately so. Her description of vascular
dementia is also not entirely accurate- is this evidence of confusion caused by the condition or an error?
- Briony suggests that the truth the novel tells us is about human experience, not tiny details.
Love and romance
● Briony’s family is dysfunctional- Emily’s love for her children is ineffectual and Briony and Cecilia’s love
for each other is squandered, while McEwan implies that their father is having an affair.
● The only love is that of Cecilia and Robbie. Their love begins in awkwardness and antagonism and their
passion is so intense that it becomes aggressive. Their sexual encounter involves embarrassment and
fumbling which adds bathos.
● In P3, their love has the weight of worldly experience behind it and has been hard-won through years of
waiting and suffering. Briony acknowledges that it’s unbearable that such a love should not find its
fulfilment and so she makes their love transcend death by writing them a happy ending.
- the love is an ‘elemental’ (p 264) force which sustains Robbie in prison and war and allows Cecilia to
forsake her own family.
● Briony’s self-love could be considered.
Aspects of crime 🕵️♀️
Punishment
● The criminals escape punishment- the innocent suffer. This goes against crime fiction conventions-
despite the thrill of transgressions against society’s moral and legal codes, CF largely upholds a
conservative view of morality, that the guilty must be punished in the end.
● Marshall is rewarded by the British establishment when he and his wife are made Lord and Lady. This
could be a social commentary on the corruption at the heart of British society, which (in 1999) may have
thought it was free from rigid class divisions, but was really just as susceptible to the influence of wealth
in 1935. Briony does wonder whether Marshall has been punished by guilt due to his charity work
(‘Perhaps he’s spent a lifetime making amends’).
- Briony’s description of the Marshalls’ wedding as a ‘mausoleum’ may dictate a form of punishment, a
kind of living death. However, there’s no escaping the enormity of Marshall’s crimes.
● Briony also evades justice; in the epilogue she is a successful novelist and esteemed matriarch,
celebrated by her family and friends.
- You could make the case that Briony endures a form of punishment through lifelong guilt. Her decision
to train as a nurse and her traumatic experiences caring for the wounded act as penance, culminating in
her novel as a final act of atonement — though her suffering never equals Robbie’s.
- Briony’s apology scene (‘I’m very very sorry. I’ve caused you such terrible distress’ p348) suggests some
penance, but it tragically never happened.
● Her novel won't offer the satisfaction of revealing the truth in her lifetime because Lola will outlive her.
The final word is ‘sleep’, leaving readers to question how peaceful Briony’s rest will be.
Crimes
● The details of Paul’s heinous crime are kept ambiguous.
- We witness the scene from Briony’s perspective, except we are aware of how she has misinterpreted
other key scenes that day and that she is an ‘unreliable witness’ (which she later admits).
- There is uncertainty over how Lola and Paul came to be together at the temple that night. At their
wedding, Briony describes Lola as someone ‘who longed to throw off the last restraints of childhood’
, (p324), thus this may suggest that Lola looked to Paul for validation and may have arranged to meet
him. This could explain why she is so prepared to cover for him.
● Marshall is also guilty of a moral crime- his Amo bars become part of the standard-issue rations for
every soldier, making him very wealthy when the war breaks out. The brief reference to the remains of
an Amo bar in Briony’s hospital is a bitter reminder of how Marshall profits from the unimaginable
suffering of others.
● The darkness of the night is continually referenced to add to the ambiguity over who the attacker is and
create suspense (crime convention), inviting the reader to question Briony’s assertion.
● Some people may see Briony’s confession that she is the ‘true’ author of the novel and she has rewritten
the past to ease her guilt and create a more uplifting ending as a crime against the reader, forcing us to
reassess what we have read.
● War as a crime against humanity- Robbie reflects on Europe being ‘a dead civilisation’ (p217)
Criminals
● McEwan keeps Marshall on the margins of the narrative. We see his perspective in a brief moment
(waking from a dream on p60) which makes him appear a suspect character. It describes how Marshall
woke in a state of sexual arousal from a dream involving his young sisters. Immediately after, Marshall
begins to groom Lola, e.g. telling her that she reminds him of his ‘favourite sister’ which carries
uncomfortable overtones for the reader.
- His sexual urges are shown at the end of C5- he gives Lola an Amo bar to indulge in inappropriate sexual
language (‘You’ve got to bite it’) and he clearly takes pleasure in this, suggested by the way he takes a
‘deep breath’ and ‘crossed and uncrossed his legs.’.
● Briony has complex motives behind her false accusation and our knowledge that she shaped the
narrative further complicates our understanding.
- Older Briony’s description of her younger self as ‘that busy, priggish, conceited little girl’ suggests that
she sees her crime as a result of her need to impose order on events, a childish naivety around sex and a
desire to be the centre of attention.
- Briony may not be completely honest with us. She discounts Robbie’s ‘theory’ that her accusation against
him has its roots in her infatuation with him and her feelings of rejection when she sees his relationship
with Cecilia develop. (Joanne Watkiss suggests that Briony’s crime stems from ‘her repressed desires, in
particular her love for her sister’s lover, Robbie’.)
Victims
Lola
● Presented as lonely and insecure
● She has been forced out of her family home due to her parents’ public divorce and is now in the care of
an aunt who has little time for her.
● She is caught between childhood and adulthood
● Marshall exploits her vulnerability and desire to be treated as a grown-up.
● Lola endures trauma following her SA- ‘hugging herself and rocking’ (p165)
● McEwan creates some ambiguity over her victim status; in P4 Briony names her as a criminal (‘There
was our crime- Lola’s, Marshall’s, mine’)
● McEwan provides us with a tantalising moment when it looks like she may reveal the truth (‘she may
have been about to embark upon a long confession’ p166) but Briony cuts her off.
● At the end, Briony sees her resembling the villain, ‘Cruella de Vil’
Robbie
● Robbie is a victim of class divisions and ‘snobbery’. He is punished for his use of an obscenity frowned
upon in upper-middle-class society and for having sexual contact with someone above his station.
● A victim of Briony’s childhood infatuation with him?
● A victim of war- he is wounded and haunted by horrors he has seen.
,Setting
1. The Tallis home (1935) 🌳
● The country house setting is a typical English crime fiction setting
● Provides crime writers with a sealed-off world of wealth and privilege and provides the
readers with the thrill of watching the dark secrets of the upper classes be brought to light.
⛲️
● The dinner was very awkward- “asphyxiating silence”- tension.
~ the temple/triton fountain ~
● The crumbling temple serves as a metaphor for the family’s own decline in social statutes and
morals. Its fading grandeur mirrors the corruption in the family.
● The temple is described as ‘the orphan of a grand society’, reflecting Briony’s feelings of being
an isolated child.
● The temple is the setting for the climax of the novel, linking it directly to the events that
Briony misinterprets, making it a focal point for her ‘sorry air’ of guilt that she later feels.
● The Triton fountain has a dark history- until the late 18th century, unidentified dead bodies
were displayed in front of it and the people of Rome were invited to try and recognise them.
This signifies that it is a place of metaphorical death. Something dies inside Lola, Briony,
Robbie and Cecilia that day.
2. France (1940) 💌
● Northern France during the British retreat to Dunkirk
● May be considered an unusual setting for a crime text, but Robbie’s perspective encourages us
to reflect on war as a crime against humanity.
● We see how modern warfare can destroy innocent civilian lives in an instant- war
dehumanises all involved.
● The scene in the bar demonstrates how even someone as fair-minded as Robbie can feel the
‘exhilaration’ of being part of the mob who vent their frustrations on the RAF man as the
trauma of war removes ‘any remaining sense of individual responsibility’. (P252)
3. London (1940) ⛑️
● The hospital setting explores the horrors of war. The lengthy description of Briony’s first 24
hours tending to the wounded arriving from Dunkirk is an intense and moving passage.
● The setting provides moments of tenderness (Briony comforting Luc Cornet) and horror.
● The reference to ‘sodden crumbs of Amo bars’ in the hospital reminds us of Marshall’s crimes
(rape of Lola and exploitation of war).
● Briony doesn’t make an explicit comparison, but perhaps we should consider that her decision
to lie to the dying Luc is similar to her decision to lie to the reader. Readers may react
negatively to being manipulated and begin to question other parts of the narrative.
4. London (1999) 👵
● The Tallis home is now Tilney’s hotel, representing a whole lifetime of guilt for Briony (now 77
years old).
- ‘The same but different’- reflects Briony’s life in which she has had to mask her guilt but
underneath is rotten; the hotel has tried to change but the rooms are still the same, the bridge
is still there, the family portrait remains etc.
,
,Themes & AoC
,Key themes 📖
Atonement and guilt
● Two main crimes: the attack on Lola and Briony’s act of bearing false witness. The rape is a shadowy
event while Briony’s perjury is explored.
● Briony writing the novel again and again is her act of atonement; she ruins lives and faces a lifetime of
guilt for it. In Briony’s defence are her youth, her innocent (foolish) motives and the lack of real
opportunity she had to retract her evidence once the adults had begun to act on her statement. Her
clearest act of guilt is when she was given a clear chance to change her evidence and still says ‘Yes, I saw
him. I saw him.’ (p181)
● Paul is obviously guilty, but Lola is also guilty by choosing to remain silent about who attacked her. In
Briony’s certainty, she finds a chance to escape the humiliation and difficulty of accusing Paul (or
accounting for herself if she was initially a willing partner). Arguably, they are more culpable than
Briony since they know Robbie is not the attacker.
● Briony’s family bear some responsibility since they should recognise her love of drama and
attention-seeking behaviour.
● Guilt extends through the novel in the war where no one remains innocent. Robbie feels guilty for the
people he has not saved. Everyone is guilty by omission if not commission, sending a message of social
responsibility. Robbie is generally set apart from the trend of guilt through inactivity by his tendency to
take decisive action which extends a message to society- ‘You’ve killed no one today? But how many did
you leave to die?’ (p261)
War and conflict
● In P1, the impending war casts a shadow over the action. The life depicted is fragile and we have a sense
of imminent destruction, adding to the elusive quality.
● In P2 & 3 we see horrific depictions of war which make Paul’s plan to profit from it look particularly
repellent.
● WWII also removes the last vestiges of the traditional social structure. The new social order is
exemplified in the West Indian taxi driver who confounds Briony’s out-dated expectations.
Writing and imagination
● The process of writing itself is a central concern- the novel is an extended study of its own composition.
● The novel is also about the making of a writer; we see Briony’s imaginative awakening. She realises that
she needs to start writing more ‘of what passed between people’. Writing involves more than imagining
other consciousnesses though and Briony goes overboard when she decides to ditch story-telling
completely to follow the stream of consciousness. Briony does eventually succeed as a critically
acclaimed novelist, but she writes and rewrites this story because it is the one that really matters to her.
- For Briony to succeed as a novelist she has to be able to imagine herself inside the consciousness of
another and she finally achieves this in Atonement.
Truth and memory
● Working out what is true is a central problem. It isn’t true that Robbie raped Lola, but to an extent it is
true that Briony believed he did. Her beliefs have been moulded by her inability to separate fact from
fiction.
● There are different types of untruth in the novel; Lola and Paul are blatantly untruthful and thus it is not
explored. There are other lapses of memory and understanding too, such as Emily thinking Paul is good
with children and Cecilia and Robbie’s conviction that Danny Hardman was the rapist- potentially
Briony does this to reinforce her own innocence. She is not the only one to misinterpret events.
, ● In a novel that claims to be constructed from events remembered from the past, memory is entwined
with truth. Has Briony remembered accurately? Has she lied? Sometimes she acknowledges that she
doesn’t remember (p41).
● In the epilogue, Briony reviews the advice she’s had about the accuracy of military history, reflecting that
this isn’t what the novel is about. May raising this issue, McEwan makes us look closely at other details,
some of which are accurate and some which aren’t (e.g. the illustration no. in Robbie’s copy of Gray’s
Anatomy). This alerts us to the possibility that they are deliberately so. Her description of vascular
dementia is also not entirely accurate- is this evidence of confusion caused by the condition or an error?
- Briony suggests that the truth the novel tells us is about human experience, not tiny details.
Love and romance
● Briony’s family is dysfunctional- Emily’s love for her children is ineffectual and Briony and Cecilia’s love
for each other is squandered, while McEwan implies that their father is having an affair.
● The only love is that of Cecilia and Robbie. Their love begins in awkwardness and antagonism and their
passion is so intense that it becomes aggressive. Their sexual encounter involves embarrassment and
fumbling which adds bathos.
● In P3, their love has the weight of worldly experience behind it and has been hard-won through years of
waiting and suffering. Briony acknowledges that it’s unbearable that such a love should not find its
fulfilment and so she makes their love transcend death by writing them a happy ending.
- the love is an ‘elemental’ (p 264) force which sustains Robbie in prison and war and allows Cecilia to
forsake her own family.
● Briony’s self-love could be considered.
Aspects of crime 🕵️♀️
Punishment
● The criminals escape punishment- the innocent suffer. This goes against crime fiction conventions-
despite the thrill of transgressions against society’s moral and legal codes, CF largely upholds a
conservative view of morality, that the guilty must be punished in the end.
● Marshall is rewarded by the British establishment when he and his wife are made Lord and Lady. This
could be a social commentary on the corruption at the heart of British society, which (in 1999) may have
thought it was free from rigid class divisions, but was really just as susceptible to the influence of wealth
in 1935. Briony does wonder whether Marshall has been punished by guilt due to his charity work
(‘Perhaps he’s spent a lifetime making amends’).
- Briony’s description of the Marshalls’ wedding as a ‘mausoleum’ may dictate a form of punishment, a
kind of living death. However, there’s no escaping the enormity of Marshall’s crimes.
● Briony also evades justice; in the epilogue she is a successful novelist and esteemed matriarch,
celebrated by her family and friends.
- You could make the case that Briony endures a form of punishment through lifelong guilt. Her decision
to train as a nurse and her traumatic experiences caring for the wounded act as penance, culminating in
her novel as a final act of atonement — though her suffering never equals Robbie’s.
- Briony’s apology scene (‘I’m very very sorry. I’ve caused you such terrible distress’ p348) suggests some
penance, but it tragically never happened.
● Her novel won't offer the satisfaction of revealing the truth in her lifetime because Lola will outlive her.
The final word is ‘sleep’, leaving readers to question how peaceful Briony’s rest will be.
Crimes
● The details of Paul’s heinous crime are kept ambiguous.
- We witness the scene from Briony’s perspective, except we are aware of how she has misinterpreted
other key scenes that day and that she is an ‘unreliable witness’ (which she later admits).
- There is uncertainty over how Lola and Paul came to be together at the temple that night. At their
wedding, Briony describes Lola as someone ‘who longed to throw off the last restraints of childhood’
, (p324), thus this may suggest that Lola looked to Paul for validation and may have arranged to meet
him. This could explain why she is so prepared to cover for him.
● Marshall is also guilty of a moral crime- his Amo bars become part of the standard-issue rations for
every soldier, making him very wealthy when the war breaks out. The brief reference to the remains of
an Amo bar in Briony’s hospital is a bitter reminder of how Marshall profits from the unimaginable
suffering of others.
● The darkness of the night is continually referenced to add to the ambiguity over who the attacker is and
create suspense (crime convention), inviting the reader to question Briony’s assertion.
● Some people may see Briony’s confession that she is the ‘true’ author of the novel and she has rewritten
the past to ease her guilt and create a more uplifting ending as a crime against the reader, forcing us to
reassess what we have read.
● War as a crime against humanity- Robbie reflects on Europe being ‘a dead civilisation’ (p217)
Criminals
● McEwan keeps Marshall on the margins of the narrative. We see his perspective in a brief moment
(waking from a dream on p60) which makes him appear a suspect character. It describes how Marshall
woke in a state of sexual arousal from a dream involving his young sisters. Immediately after, Marshall
begins to groom Lola, e.g. telling her that she reminds him of his ‘favourite sister’ which carries
uncomfortable overtones for the reader.
- His sexual urges are shown at the end of C5- he gives Lola an Amo bar to indulge in inappropriate sexual
language (‘You’ve got to bite it’) and he clearly takes pleasure in this, suggested by the way he takes a
‘deep breath’ and ‘crossed and uncrossed his legs.’.
● Briony has complex motives behind her false accusation and our knowledge that she shaped the
narrative further complicates our understanding.
- Older Briony’s description of her younger self as ‘that busy, priggish, conceited little girl’ suggests that
she sees her crime as a result of her need to impose order on events, a childish naivety around sex and a
desire to be the centre of attention.
- Briony may not be completely honest with us. She discounts Robbie’s ‘theory’ that her accusation against
him has its roots in her infatuation with him and her feelings of rejection when she sees his relationship
with Cecilia develop. (Joanne Watkiss suggests that Briony’s crime stems from ‘her repressed desires, in
particular her love for her sister’s lover, Robbie’.)
Victims
Lola
● Presented as lonely and insecure
● She has been forced out of her family home due to her parents’ public divorce and is now in the care of
an aunt who has little time for her.
● She is caught between childhood and adulthood
● Marshall exploits her vulnerability and desire to be treated as a grown-up.
● Lola endures trauma following her SA- ‘hugging herself and rocking’ (p165)
● McEwan creates some ambiguity over her victim status; in P4 Briony names her as a criminal (‘There
was our crime- Lola’s, Marshall’s, mine’)
● McEwan provides us with a tantalising moment when it looks like she may reveal the truth (‘she may
have been about to embark upon a long confession’ p166) but Briony cuts her off.
● At the end, Briony sees her resembling the villain, ‘Cruella de Vil’
Robbie
● Robbie is a victim of class divisions and ‘snobbery’. He is punished for his use of an obscenity frowned
upon in upper-middle-class society and for having sexual contact with someone above his station.
● A victim of Briony’s childhood infatuation with him?
● A victim of war- he is wounded and haunted by horrors he has seen.
