Craft Essay # 7 - Atonement

Craft Essay # 7:
Atonement by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan’s Atonement offers a plethora of craft essay topics—the shifting point of view, the fracturing of time, the withholding of pertinent information, the use of description to enhance mood—hell, I could write three pages just on the way McEwan diverts our attention so that Robbie Turner manages to believably deliver the wrong letter to Cecelia. But these brilliant techniques would not be half as effective if the characters were not so vividly brought to life.
McEwan wastes no time. In the novel’s very first sentence, he provides us with a piercing glimpse into the character of Briony Tallis, the 13-year-old girl whose overheated imagination will wreak havoc on those around her:
The play—for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper—was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch. (p. 3)

First, there is the matter of Briony having written a play, an impressive accomplishment in and of itself, never mind the producer’s duties she has taken responsibility for. The “two-day tempest of composition” clues us in to the girl’s tumultuous nature. Of course, at this very early point in the novel, we don’t yet know Briony’s age, but that final detail—“causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch”—implies youth, since no adult playwright would care about missing two meals during the frenzied completion of a play. In one sentence, the author establishes Briony as precocious, tempestuous and immature.
Such a perceptive, economical sketch is typical of the novel, but McEwan uses many other techniques to establish and develop character. Because the third-person narrator is closely aligned with one character at a time (Briony in chapter one, her sister, Cecelia, in chapter two, etc.), we are privy to those characters’ opinions and observations of others. And these characters are very opinionated, constantly judging those around them. These judgments (for example, Cecelia’s labeling of Robbie Turner as “pretentious” on page 18) tell us as much, or more, about the judge as about the judged. Another example: to Cecelia, her mother is “distant, even unfriendly” (p. 19), but to Briony, Mrs. Tallis is “endlessly kind and sweet and good” (p. 151). We may find, as we read on, that both girls are right, in a way, but the narrator’s real purpose here is to deepen our understanding of the character who is doing the judging. Cecelia, just out of college, does not feel close to her mother and even resents her. Briony, on the verge of puberty, still worships her mother, who dotes on her, the baby of the family.
McEwan also utilizes lists to show character. Until chapter 8 (p. 73), we know relatively little about Robbie Turner, whose love for Cecelia leads to so much pain and turmoil. On page 77, the narrator lists the items in Robbie’s cramped study, which range from hiking maps and a compass to “ten typed-up poems [that] lay beneath a printed rejection slip from Criterion magazine, initialed by Mr. Eliot himself.” This list, combined with Robbie’s bathtub reverie over Cecelia’s plunge into the fountain earlier that day (pages 73 and 28, respectively) paints a vibrant portrait of a sensitive, adventurous, intelligent young man who is madly in love. (The compass and map also foreshadow Robbie’s tortuous trek through war-torn France later in the novel.)
Another tool in the author’s character toolbox is dialogue. Pierrot and Jackson, Briony’s young twin cousins, whom she recruits to perform in her play, are revealed the first time they open their mouths, on page 11: “I hate plays and all that sort of thing,” Pierrot says, and Jackson chimes in, “I hate them too, and dressing up.” These two may be brats, but, interestingly, our poor opinion of them evolves into empathy, and not because they change (in fact, they remain rather oafish throughout), but because we grow to better understand the narcissistic Briony and the twins’ manipulative sister, Lola.
Dialogue is also used to establish the characters of Nettles and Mace, Robbie Turner’s battle companions on the long march through France to Dunkirk. Because they are relatively minor characters, the author must render them quickly, which he accomplishes through the use of repetition. On page 181, as Robbie studies a map, Nettles jokes, “He’s seeing crumpet” (crumpet being British slang for “a desirable woman”), and Mace replies, “He’s having his fucking doubts again.” This exchange is repeated, almost word for word, on page 202. These two, with their routines, are like a pair of vaudevillians. McEwan then deepens them with very brief descriptions of their actions (Mace displaying unlikely domestic talents as he improvises comfy straw mattresses in an old barn [p. 184]) and physical characteristics (Nettles’s “sharp features and a friendly, rodent look” [p. 184]).
This second section of the novel contains many such minor characters. Here’s a “pink-faced [Major] of the old school” who tries to recruit Robbie for one last run against the Germans: “The major had a little toothbrush mustache overhanging small, tight lips that clipped his words briskly. ‘We’ve got Jerry trapped in the woods over there…We’re going to get in there and flush him out’” (p. 207). Later, a similarly gung-ho lieutenant appears for all of three paragraphs: “Round-shouldered, bony, with a deskbound look and a wisp of ginger mustache” (p. 232) Then there is the gypsy woman who gives Robbie and Nettles some water and food: “She was rather handsome, with dark skin, a proud look and a long straight nose, and a floral scarf was tied across her silver hair” (p. 240). These characters, along with the author’s terrifying descriptions of the landscape and action, make Robbie’s final days believable and agonizing.
Likewise the final section of the novel, which follows Briony’s harrowing experiences as a wartime nurse. The narrator deftly introduces wounded soldiers, injecting their brief time on the page with great meaning. Here is a fatally wounded lad whom Briony comforts in his final moments:
He was sitting, propped up by several pillows, watching the commotion with a kind of abstracted childlike wonder. It was hard to think of him as a soldier. He had a fine, delicate face, with dark eyebrows and dark green eyes, and a soft, full mouth. His face was white and had an unusual sheen, and the eyes were unhealthily radiant (p. 288).

It is impossible to discuss character development in Atonement without acknowledging the vital role played by point of view. McEwan’s narrator is remarkably controlled, almost surgical in her∗ descriptions of both landscape and character. She is wiser and more sophisticated than any of the people populating the story and thus can articulate their feelings and un- or partially-formed philosophies. Cecelia, though she may not recognize the underlying source of the tension between herself and Robbie, is, in the narrator’s translation, aware that “there was no ease, no stability in the course of their conversations, no chance to relax” (p. 26). Likewise, the narrator is able to describe Briony’s teenage musings on life and meaning in a way far beyond the girl’s ability to express it herself:
She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If only she could find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. (p.33)

These super-articulate representations of what are probably, in actuality, confused and rambling thoughts, clarify the characters for us, and help us understand their desires and motives.
Atonement is a heartbreaking novel not just because its two lovers don’t live happily ever after, nor because Briony never reconciles with her sister. The twists and turns of the plot, the clever literary tricks, the crystalline language—it would all add up to nothing if not for the fully realized characters.