Overview of Briony's Character

English Lit: AQA A Level Atonement - Specification B, topic 6.1.1

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.

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.

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.

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).