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Comparative Essay On Atonement

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Alice “I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death,” - Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Imagination and writing go hand-in-hand, yet when writing about real life, where does one find equilibrium between fiction and reality? In Atonement, Briony Tallis has been writing her whole life, crafting works of fiction not only from her imagination, but from her life. If Briony were not a writer in Atonement, one with a particular fantastical sense of reality, the sins she must atone for might …show more content…

She “was one of those children possessed by the desire to have the world just so,” (4). People cannot fully control those around them, so Briony found other ways to control her life. She cleans and organizes her room meticulously. Writing became a perfect outlet for her controlling tendencies. Not only was writing exciting, but “[h]er passion for tidiness was also satisfied, for an unruly world could be made just so,” (7). In stories, Briony can decide what happens start to finish and what everyone is thinking and feeling. Writing is essential to Briony because it is an outlet for her to take control over all that she cannot actually …show more content…

The story she writes, the story that is Atonement, has a proper plot and proper characters who are essential to the story and develop over time. This story is still fantasy since we know Briony changed the fountain scene as well as invented a happy ending where Briony is reunited with Cecelia and Robbie who both manage to stay happily alive and in love. Though they might have actually died, as Fulgham said, “love trumps death,”. This fantasy is a very different fantasy than Briony presented when she was young. The fantasy she presented when she was young served to protect her sense of control. This one serves to expose her transgressions and how she got caught up in imagination. She “gave [the readers] happiness, but [she] was not so self-serving as to let them forgive [her],” (351). Her final draft is true atonement because it is without

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The writer of this critical essay is Charles Pastoor, he argues that atonement is absent in the novel Atonement. The reason is throughout the story, whenever crisis unfolds (Briony accuses Robbie of raping Lola), no one in the Tallis household display any kind of redemption. For which he states, "No one in Atonement exhibits any inclination to rest his or her hope in a benevolent providence". Pastoor portrays Briony as the God of this novel, because she is the one who narrates the entire story, the one who knows about Cecilia and Robbie's "secret romance", and the one who falsely accuses Robbie for raping Lola in the woods. On certain levels, Pastoor suggests that Briony isn't the best choice to be the narrator.

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Robbie and Cecilia’s relationship is central to the novel Atonement. It is at first a slow burning one but it essentially becomes what the novel is centred around. Their interlude in the library is the moment they revisit consistently, Robbie whilst at war and Cecilia during her nursing. In the library the ‘words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract’.

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