What is the story of Atonement?
This sweeping English drama, based on the book by Ian McEwan, follows the lives of young lovers Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy). When the couple are torn apart by a lie constructed by Cecilia’s jealous younger sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan), all three of them must deal with the consequences. Robbie is the hardest hit, since Briony’s deception results in his imprisonment, but hope for Cecilia and her beau increases when their paths cross during World War II.
Atonement/Film synopsis
What is a symbol for Atonement?
Water is a symbol of life and rebirth throughout Atonement. When Cecilia jumps into the fountain, she is reborn as an object of affection in Robbie’s eyes.
How is love presented in Atonement?
Atonement, by Ian McEwan, explores the theme of love through a variety of techniques such as symbolism, metaphors and repetition discuss the themes of newfound, unavailable and nurturing love. Uniquely, McEwan intertwines these techniques with foreshadowing and imagery to convey complex emotions guilt and jealousy.
Why did Ian McEwan write Atonement?
He wrote Atonement with intense fear as well as excitement. He knew he was exploring new ground, another country. He has travelled a long way since First Love, Last Rites (1975), the first collection of stories that won him the nickname Ian Macabre. The private names he gave this book spell out the distance.
What does the vase mean in Atonement?
Throughout Ian McEwan’s Atonement, the Meissen vase symbolizes the destruction of several seemingly breakable relationships. The vase plays an important role in the Tallis’ family heritage. … He was a war hero for risking his life for others and receives the vase as a sign a gratitude.
What does water mean in Atonement?
Water is used in Atonement to symbolize atonement or obtaining forgiveness for one’s actions. It connotes freshness, purity, and clean newness, much like forgiveness does.
Was atonement based on a true story?
No, Atonement is not based on a true story. Briony Tallis, who is set up as the novel’s author and narrator, is no more real than her story.
What is wrong with Briony in Atonement?
Briony’s immaturity, and her inability to grasp certain situations which are beyond her understanding, lead her to misinterpret a scene she witnesses of a struggle between Robbie and Cecilia.
Why did Briony write atonement?
Briony is the novel’s protagonist. At the novel’s outset, she is a precocious girl with a gift for writing. … Towards the end of the novel, it is revealed that she has written the story o of the novel in an attempt to atone for the damages she has caused and rectify the falsehoods she spread.
Did Robbie and Cecilia meet in the cafe?
The meeting between Robbie and Cecilia at the cafe was the last time the two ever saw each other; after that, Cecilia gave Robbie the photo of the Beach House where she wanted to holiday with him when he had a short leave after completing his basic military training.
What poet does Cecilia quote in her letter to Robbie?
In her letters to Robbie, Cecilia quotes from W. H. Auden’s 1939 poem, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” which includes the line, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” In part, the novel explores the question of whether the writing of fiction is not much more than the construction of elaborate entertainments—an indulgence in …
Why did Lola lie in Atonement?
She is staying there while her parents work out their divorce. While at the house, Lola is first assaulted and then raped by Paul Marshall, chocolate salesman and budding millionaire. She lies to protect him, and then allows Briony to convince the police that Robbie Turner was the one who attacked her.
Why does Briony Tallis become a nurse?
The novel moves into World War II. In the British army, a desperate Robbie joins the British retreat from France early in the war. Meanwhile, Briony and Cecilia both become nurses, despite their upper class roots, in efforts to cope with what has happened at the Tallis estate.
Does Briony get dementia?
Briony is dying of vascular dementia at this point. The disease will slowly destroy her memory and consciousness before she dies, and she faces “an incoming tide of forgetting and then oblivion” (4.45). She’ll be gone and the book will survive, carrying its tidy ending forward.
What does Briony think happened by the fountain?
We see the fountain scene in three different perspectives, in the eyes of young Briony and through Robbie and Cecilia. … Briony believed that Robbie had some kind of power over Cecilia; her interpretation came from her knowledge from the Victoria era that men were superior to women (McEwan 38).
What do Cecilia and Robbie ask Briony to do?
The last thing Cecilia and Robbie ask Briony to do is try and remember what Danny Hardman was doing that night. Briony responds that Old Hardman was likely telling the truth—Paul Marshall was in fact the one who raped Lola.
Why did Briony blame Robbie?
First things first, Atonement has a very unreliable narrator: Briony. … On the surface, one could say that Briony was naive and her cousin Lola influenced her to believe that Robbie was indeed a relationship maniac. However, part of her hatred towards Robbie also stemmed from rejection.
What does Briony see from the window of the nursery?
10Just before she arrives ‘at one of the nursery’s wide-open windows’ and contemplates the fountain dumb show, Briony muses on the telepathic power of stories, a ‘magical process’ through which ‘you [see] the word castle, and it [is] there, seen from some distance, with woods in high summer spread before it’ (37).
Why is Cecilia mad at Robbie?
When her mother tells her to put some flowers in a vase, she takes all day about it. And then she breaks the vase when she has an argument with her childhood friend Robbie Turner. And then she’s so mad at him that she takes off her clothes and dives into the fountain to retrieve the broken pieces of the vase.
Why did Robbie touch the water in atonement?
When Robbie touches the water, it’s like he’s touching Cee for the first time. It’s sexual, but it’s not as lustful as he stroking the handle; it’s more like he’s acknowledging his love for her. Sorry if i repeat anything but the use of color in the briony-as-a-nurse section of the film was important.