43 pages • 1 hour read
Ian McEwanAtonement
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Letter
The two letters Robbie produces represent the two aspects of his desire. One is graphic and sexual while the other is heartfelt and sincere. Both aspects are part of healthy love; however, because Robbie’s emotions are repressed, his sexual desire expresses itself in vulgar obscenities. Writing the vulgar letter provides Robbie sexual release. Afterward, he feels relieved enough to write the intended letter by hand.
The vulgar letter symbolizes both intrapersonal and interpersonal communication problems. His more refined romantic feelings are more difficult to access than his sexual fantasies, suggesting that in the emotionally repressed world of the Tallises, expressing sincere emotion is more shameful than violent sexuality. While Cecilia is able to interpret Robbie’s true feelings from the vulgar letter, Briony is not. Briony is not old or mature enough to understand the complexity of adult emotions, nor does she know the nuances of Robbie and Cecilia’s relationship. She mischaracterizes the intent of the letter, and this failure has terrible consequences.
The others’ reaction to the letter symbolizes the way in which unspoken agendas operate. Emily disapproves of Jack’s sponsorship of Robbie’s education, and he has ignored her suggestions that they stop paying for Robbie’s tuition. When Emily reads the letter, she folds her resentment of her husband and her class prejudice into her estimation of Robbie’s guilt. Her willful misinterpretation of the letter allows her to enforce an underlying agenda without confronting the real issue. The letter brings the social class tensions between Robbie and the Tallis family to the surface. It reveals that the tensions were always there, and that Robbie’s acceptance was conditional on his maintaining his inferior status. Once he began to outpace Cecilia in his studies and career prospects, the family asserted its power to remove Robbie as a threat to their assumed superiority.
Literature
Atonement demonstrates an awareness of its own status as a work of fiction. The consequence of this is that literature becomes an important motif throughout the novel. The story begins with Briony writing a play titled The Tales of Arabella. This piece of juvenile literature is a symbol of Briony’s immature relationship with stories, but it also foregrounds the importance of literary creation as an act of agency. The play is not the right genre for Briony: Though she writes the play, she does not have the forethought or temperament to direct it. She estrangers her actors and awkwardly relinquishes the main role to Lola. The play is a disaster, but one which is overlooked due to an even more disastrous fiction invented by Briony on the night the play was intended to be performed. When her tale about Robbie garners her more praise and attention than her harmless play, she unconsciously transitions to writing fiction, which only requires one creator: the author.
Cecilia has a different relationship with literature. Cecilia is a literature student who enjoys a passive relationship with books. Briony produces literature whereas Cecilia consumes it, interprets it, and analyses it. Robbie’s slightly better skill as a student of literature is a symbolic illustration of how their relationship develops. He understands and analyses their relationship more quickly and more insightfully than Cecilia, who then realizes that he is correct. Even though he sends Cecilia the wrong letter, she interprets his words and their subtext just as one interprets a novel.
Briony’s early relationship with literature is a symbolic illustration of her desire for maturity and attention. As an author approaching the end of her life, Briony describes to the audience how her relationship with literature has changed. She is a rich and famous novelist, no longer requiring praise. The novel Atonement is a symbolic change in perspective, in which Briony writes for other people rather than herself. She has perspective acquired through decades of rigorous self-reflection, and she finally feels able to atone for her sins.
Amo Bars
Paul Marshall’s family made a fortune selling low quality chocolate, and Paul, using his knowledge of chemistry, has devised a way to lower the quality even further to increase his profit margins. The Amo bars he produces are included in the new government provisions for soldiers abroad. Paul actively lobbies the government to buy his product, meaning that the taxes of ordinary citizens will increase his private wealth. He senses that war will erupt, and instead of finding a way to help, like Briony and Cecilia, he devises a way to profit. The Amo bars are a symbolic distinction between Paul and Robbie. While Robbie is sent to the war to die, the man who actually raped Lola stays at home and makes a fortune from the war. Robbie likely eats the Amo bars Paul produces, reaffirming their unbridgeable difference in status.
The Amo bars are also a symbol of Paul’s manipulation. He gives chocolate to Lola in the hours before he rapes her, tricking her into believing that he is generous and kind. The gift of the Amo bar suggests that Paul is planning his attack in advance and that he is already interested in Lola. The chocolate is a reminder of Lola’s youth and innocence. She is still immature enough to be swayed by candy bars, and Paul knows this. His manipulation is the foreshadowing of his crime, in which he robs Lola’s innocence through an act of sexual violence. The contrast between the gift of a chocolate bar and the brutal rape (for which he is never punished) is a symbolic representation of Paul’s elite privilege entitlement. In this sense, the Amo bars illustrate the fractured, unjust nature of British society.
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By Ian McEwan
