Detection in Atonement

Q: Robbie and Cecilia as Detectives in *Atonement*

*Atonement* does not have an obvious detective figure. The police inspectors who arrive at the Tallis household are there for only two chapters. The focus of the novel then swiftly turns to the British army’s retreat to Dunkirk.

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Robbie and Cecilia as Detectives in Atonement

Atonement does not have an obvious detective figure. The police inspectors who arrive at the Tallis household are there for only two chapters. The focus of the novel then swiftly turns to the British army’s retreat to Dunkirk.

Robbie's theory about Briony

We do see characters briefly play detective. Robbie theorises about Briony’s false accusation against him and traces the cause back to an incident eight years’ previous in which Briony deliberately falls into a pool and forces Robbie to jump in and save her from drowning.
Briony then tells Robbie that she loves him, something Robbie puts down to a “schoolgirlish passion” which Briony must have “hidden” and “nurtured” (p233) for three years which in turn led to her feeling “betrayed” by Robbie “favouring her sister” (p233).

Cecilia's role as detective

Cecilia also plays the role of detective, convinced that it had been Danny Hardman who had sexually assaulted Lola.

Briony and the Reader as Detectives in Atonement

The closest to a detective figure in the novel is Briony. It is she who begins to piece together a story when she observes Robbie and Cecilia by the fountain in Chapter 3.

Briony introduces criminality

Briony introduces a criminal element to explain what she has witnessed (“What strange power did he have over her? Blackmail? Threats?” p38).
Robbie’s obscene note to Cecilia is, for Briony, further evidence of Robbie’s criminality (“With the letter, something elemental, brutal, perhaps even criminal had been introduced…” p113) and, when she comes upon him and Cecilia making love in the library, she interprets this as a sexual assault by a “maniac”.

Briony's misinterpretations

But due to McEwan’s use of different perspectives in the novel, with events focalised through different characters at different points throughout Part One, readers can see that Briony’s assumption of Robbie’s criminality is based on a series of tragic misinterpretations.
We witness each of these events being focalised through the perspective of either Cecilia (Chapter 2) or Robbie (Chapters 8 and 11) and so are well aware that Briony’s perspective is flawed.

Briony stopping the confession

Just as Lola is on the point of making some form of “confession” (p166), Briony shuts her down and imposes upon Lola her own version of events: “It was Robbie, wasn’t it?”

The reader as detective

This, in turn, places the reader in the role of detective.
McEwan positions us to discount Briony’s interpretation of events and invites us to come to our own understanding of what has happened by the island temple.
McEwan (or Briony?) has left us with a number of clues, particularly concerning Paul Marshall’s sexual interest in young girls, although, as is traditional with crime texts, the revelation of the identity of the criminal does not arrive until near the end.