Briony's choice in atonement

First thing that came to my mind after reading ‘Atonement’ was fury. Overwhelming, almost too personal. While reading the story of three people, who lost everything due to one girl’s imagination, I couldn’t help asking: ‘Why so?’, with fury and the feeling close to detest. I always tend to feel too much empathy to fictional characters as I reflect every moment of theirs on myself. This case is not an exception as well. But after calming down my ugly angry cries I started to realize that everything in McEwan’s book was just right. Or to be more particular, accurate. And the name of the book reflects the main idea in the best way possible, giving a reader the plain hint of what he should expect of that masterpiece.

Could Briony have been forgiven? Does she deserve the atonement for what she had done? Those questions came back to my mind all the time I was reading the book. Definitely, what she has done was a terrible mistake of an immature and stupid child, who wanted to be saved from drowning in the river by a prince. And in her perception, a prince was not someone, who could descend to dirty messages and anatomic love. No. Briony didn’t realize at that time that her prince and her princess sister were just as human as she was (or even more). She assumed the end for her story just like a plot for one of her numerous tales, but not like for real lives. Did she destroy Cecilia and Robbie’s lives? Exactly so. Did she spend her entire life in order to atone? Definitely. Not only she became a nurse to deserve some respect and some kind of oblivion, but she also made ‘the two by the fountain’ live happily, as they really deserved to, on the pages of her novel. But did Briony finally atone? No, and she knew she couldn’t, no matter what she attempted to do.

‘ Нолу can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? ’

Briony wrote her book as an act of atonement, but in the act of writing she found that it is impossible for her to fully atone, since she was the one who held the power and she would be unable to prevent herself from the reader’s perception. In other words, she decided not to wipe the slate clean like she wanted, but atone on the paper. I guess, her way of atonement was to perpetuate Cecilia and Robbie’s love and happiness on the pages, but not her self atonement. She chose to live with her guilt and to die with it, if only the two were atoned by live and people.

Truth is not always something that really happened. Sometimes it’s just the jump into the fountain, the shame in order to save the reputation or the words of a little dreamy girl. Sometimes the truth is a story written by the previously stupid girl, who always returns to her mistakes. The girl, who wants to be atoned and forgiven by herself.

And I decide to believe in her truth, just like the others did when she was thirteen.

“But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive andflourish. ”