The discourse of consciousness in atonement by Ian McEwan

Nowadays people tend to take the consciousness as a model for investigation. It’s a great seduction to analyze and understand the mechanisms of thinking, in other words, to follow the unconscious connections of one’s mind. Here comes a discourse, which is like a “magnifying glass” helps to see the way a character thinks. Contemporary British writers, such as Martin Amis and Ian McEwan lead the reader into the discourse of the character.

It should be evident that discourse is the form of the consciousness, based on the cultural context. Artistic discourse in the way is an oral and written manifestation of characters’ consciousness in the complex of the certain social dialects, idiolects and the spheres of concept. The natural conclusion from these observations and principles is that the usage of certain words, constructions, types of the speech etc. by the author forms the certain modi of the characters and the collision of these modi determines the plot of the novel and its dynamics. We define discourse as the peculiar mental manifestation of the character, in other words - the creation of the personally-marked text attributed to the character by the author.

The basic point in the essay is to study the development of the device of discoursive consciousness of the character, following the main twists of the plot in the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan. The book was published in 2001, and it was a revolution because of total breaking the style of early McEwan. The Observer called this book “the best thing he has ever written”.

The plot is rather intricate. This is a story of a teenager Briony Tallis told by her in a half of the century. The girl misinterpreted the relations between her sister Cecilia and Robbie, Cecilia’s childhood friend, and as a result accused Robbie of the assault he had not committed. Since she did it, their lives have been changed forever. Briony has no regrets but the attempt to atone.

Internal discourse (or the discourse of the consciousness) derives from the conscious, subconscious and contextual ones, building the narrative space of the inner world of the character. In the Randomhouse Interview, McEwan said: “I value the word for its power to take a reader inside another person's mind, inside a character; we discover what it might be, to be someone other than ourselves.”

. That’s particularly the function of the discourse. The value of a word itself is fatal. This idea brilliantly works for the plot of Atonement. One moment, a single minute changes the whole life, plans, future, wishes and desires. This can be called “the fatality of chance”.

In “Atonement” also the idea of the degree of human responsibility is introduced. In the third part, which was not actually real, Robbie asks Briony: “How much growing up do you need to do? There are soldiers dying in the field of eighteen. Old enough to be left to die on the roads” (McEwan 2002: 342). The play in being responsibly old enough leads to total misunderstanding of the grown-ups relations and in the end to the death of Robbie and Cee.

From the point of the composition the novel is divided into three parts, the first one tells about the Tallises in summer 1935. This part is a totally realistic one and, starting the novel, it inclines that the whole novel would be a realistic narration. The second part shows Robbie in the war, and the third one is set in 1999. Thus the change of time and space takes place in the novel. It works for the dynamic overview of the characters’ inner world, and in the end for the feeling of an evident discord between the reality and fabricated world by Briony-the writer. This construction sets the so-called “rules” for the discourses functioning, developing and comparing, which on the whole creates the conflict of discourses perception.

The main story-stuff twist includes the triad Robbie-Cecilia-Briony, that is why we should focus on them. Comparing the first part (especially the moment of closer in the library) and the end of the second one (written by Briony) the difference of the discourses is evident. It is hard to feel the lovers alive in the second chapter as their life is less intimate, but more tense and external.

The depiction of the characters’ consciousness and the world in the light of it makes possible for the reader to feel the characters and to be “inside” the character. On the whole this action stresses the novel’s psychology and even carries it to the dramatic extremes. They are intensified by the dissonance of the real and fabricated things. This quintessence is a play of mystifications, which gradually confuses the reader.

The play is also based on the principle of the parallelism of Robbie’s and Cecilia’s discourses. In the first part the lovers perceive various situations in the same way - from the banquette preparation to the reading of the note. They have their “mutual discourse” which is their hope, big expectations that are not destined to be the reality. The conflict is also stressed with their maximalist (their age) and class system (their unequal social position). Thus their future was destined to be the castles in the air and this strive for the future produces dramatic effect. Moreover the play of discourses is framed symbolically according to the rules of realism (a vase - the English traditions; the library - silence, knowledge; the fountain - emotions, time; the house - family). Also, the special McEwan’s visual metaphor works for the plot. For example the fountain scene, where wet Cecilia embodies the transformation from a girl into a woman from Robbie’s point of view.

The round composition of the novel, the play of narration modi and the discursive polyphony brilliantly work for the plot affecting the reader.

When you turn over the pages of Atonement reading, you feel that something is wrong, and at the end of the novel you get an inevitable disappointment, you can even get angry with an author. This effect is produced by the play of “simulacrum ", when you see the picture but do not feel it, a false reality. McEwan like Thomas Hardy foresees the feeling of the reader, but these are “the rules of the game”. The dissonance between the realism and postmodernism, in some ways Jane Austen’s lightness or total disappointment of Chuck Palahniuk make you feel lost. The reality is unreliable; we are living in the epoch “post”.

The narration of A tonemen” in the end focuses on one character. Briony Tallis was left alone to atone. The effect of “looking back”, like in On Chesil Beach, both generalizes the conflict and personifies it. The personal experience or sharing with intimacy brings the postmodern sensibility. The hard emotional twist seems to end the novel. You close the book the novel is read. It is like the narrator closes the eyes, when the reader closes the book. Here applying the notion of Roland Barthes “death of the author”, the author dies ad verbum. The atonement is committed: «There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelist, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task. And that was precisely the point. The attempt was all» (McEwan 2002: 371). McEwan “helps” Briony to do this, the point was the personal tragedy an attempt to atone.

■ The author of Atonemen” does not present an open ending. It is finished, like a human life, but by writing this novel McEwan leaves something more to the reader. This is a feeling of burden, which cannot be forgotten or “swallowed”, it can only last.