6.1.1

Overview of Briony's Character

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Overview of Briony's Character in Atonement

We see Briony as a 13-year-old, an 18-year-old and a 77-year-old. Her presence dominates the novel and she narrates the narrative as suits her.

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Stages of Briony's life

  • We see Briony in three different moments of her life:
    • First, as a 13-year-old child anticipating the return of her brother to the family estate in Surrey,
    • Secondly, as an 18-year-old trainee nurse working in a London hospital
    • Finally, as the 77-year-old writer, newly diagnosed as suffering from vascular dementia.
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Briony's presence in Atonement

  • Briony's presence is everywhere in this book.
  • We learn in the closing paragraphs of Part Four that the novel we are reading has been ‘written by’ Briony as an act of atonement for the “crime” she commits as a 13-year-old.
  • This, in turn, forces us to re-evaluate what we have just read.
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Response to Briony's narrative

  • Briony admits to changing historical facts in her novel to manipulate her readers' responses and to provide a more uplifting ending.
  • Consequently, readers may question the version of the story she provides us with elsewhere in the novel. Briony may even become a rather suspect character because of her willingness to blur the line between fiction and reality and to reshape the truth to her own ends – as she herself says in the final pages of the novel, to play at being “God” with the “absolute power of deciding outcomes” (p371).

Jump to other topics

1Introduction to Atonement

2Chapter Summaries & Analysis: Part One

3Chapter Summaries & Analysis: Part Two

4Chapter Summaries & Analysis: Part Three

5Chapter Summaries & Analysis: Part Four

5.1Epilogue: London, 1999 - Pages 353-371

6Key Character Profiles

7Key Themes

8Writing Techniques

9Context

10Critical Debates

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