Full Book Analysis

Atonement is the story of how a young girl’s desire to be an adult, in addition to a vivid
imagination, leads her to make a partially innocent mistake that has devastating
consequences. The novel explores the distinction between childhood and adulthood, the
nature of perspective, the pull of regret, and, perhaps most explicitly, the power of
storytelling. This theme is clear from the structure of the novel as a work of metafiction,
referring to the fictional nature of the narrative. Most of the novel is told from a
third-person point of view, with Part One switching between the perspectives of various
members of the Tallis, Quincey, and Turner families, Part Two told entirely from
Robbie’s perspective, and Part Three told entirely from Briony’s perspective. Only in the
epilogue is it revealed that the book, up to that point, has been Briony’s final novel, her
attempt to atone for the consequences of her childish mistake. To read the story of
Cecilia and Robbie and become invested in their fates, only to learn that they never had a
happy ending, drives home how powerful stories can be.

At thirteen years old, Briony is on the cusp between childhood and adolescence and
feels that she is ready for adulthood. This feeling intensifies during the inciting incident
in the novel, when she sees Cecilia and Robbie by the fountain. Watching their
interaction causes Briony to realize there are situations she cannot fully understand.
This realization frustrates Briony, but she understands that this can be useful to inspire
her writing. Though she sees Robbie as a threat, she views him and her sister more as
characters in a story than actual people. Briony’s reaction shows how the nature of
perspective can influence the way one sees reality, a theme that is integral to the plot.
Her reaction also shows Briony’s naivete despite her desire to be an adult as well as how
she sees the world through the lens of a story. Not only does this incident incite Briony
to begin thinking in a new way, but the moment also alters the relationship between
Cecilia and Robbie. Though they have known each other since childhood, Robbie realizes
he is in love with Cecilia and writes her a letter that will change their fates forever.

The rising action occurs when Robbie gives Briony the wrong version of his letter,
literally putting Briony between him and Cecilia. The note only confirms for Briony what
she had suspected after seeing him with her sister by the fountain, that Robbie poses a
danger to Cecilia. Upon telling Lola what the note said, Lola confirms that Robbie must
be a maniac. Though Lola attempts to behave and dress like an adult, her reaction, like
Briony’s, shows that she is still innocent in adult matters. In this way, the novel uses
understanding of sexuality as what separates children from adults. The action continues
to rise when Cecilia and Robbie admit their feelings for each other and make love in the
library, only to be walked in on by Briony. While Briony believes she has just saved her
sister from an assault, Cecilia and Robbie are frustrated by her interruption. Again, this
scene shows how a person’s individual perspective and assumptions can shape what
they perceive to be objective reality. Due to these assumptions, no one is aware of the
real threat that is foreshadowed. Lola blames her scratches and bruises on the twins.
Even Emily wonders how young boys could be capable of such strength, while Paul
blames his own scratch on breaking up the fight. Due to Paul’s wealth and background,
no one suspects that he could be the true danger.

The climax occurs when Briony finds Lola on the ground after being assaulted and
names Robbie as her rapist. Though Briony did not see the man, in her mind, all of
Robbie’s actions point to him being the culprit. This climax occurs relatively early in the
novel. However, it is truly the point at which Briony cannot reverse the course of her
actions, which she will spend her life trying to make up for. By naming Robbie, she has
set in motion the events that will determine the fates of both Robbie and Cecilia. After
being released from prison early in exchange for joining the armed forces, Robbie dies
before being evacuated from Dunkirk. In jumping straight from the morning Robbie is
arrested to his journey to Dunkirk, the novel shows how Briony’s crime is directly
related to Robbie’s death. Meanwhile, Cecilia cuts herself off from her family, works as a
nurse in London, and dies in a bomb raid. Had Briony not accused Robbie of a crime he
did not commit, Cecilia likely would have stayed with her family.

However, Cecilia’s and Robbie’s true fates are not revealed within Briony’s story. Instead,
she first recounts Robbie’s journey to Dunkirk, as told to her by Corporal Nettle. In
describing the people Robbie helped on his way, despite his desperation to simply get
home to Cecilia, Briony reminds readers of Robbie’s kind and generous nature. She then
describes her own experience training as a nurse at the beginning of the war and the
horrors she witnesses in the hospital. Instead of attending Cambridge as she had
planned, Briony becomes a nurse out of a sort of penance, hoping that if she helps
enough people, she may make up for what she did to Robbie. Seeing Robbie in every
soldier, the weight of Briony’s guilt is evident. The action rises again when Briony learns
from her father that Lola is to marry Paul. Briony’s guilt and regret are only
compounded as she realizes her false testimony not only sent a man to prison but also
allowed the true rapist to walk free and to marry his victim. This event incites Briony to
visit Cecilia, where she is relieved to realize Robbie is alive and plans to set right what
she did wrong.

The epilogue reveals that this last meeting between Briony and Cecilia never happened
but instead was Briony’s final attempt to make up for her mistake. Though Briony went
on to have a successful career and marriage, she has been carrying the guilt over her
childhood mistake for her entire life. Meanwhile, Paul and Lola have gone on to be
fabulously wealthy and respected philanthropists. Paul’s arc shows that, unlike a story
where the heroes succeed and the villain is punished, real life often differs from stories
in that malevolent people can come out on top in the end. Still, just as when she was a
child, Briony believes in the power of stories, so much that she hopes her final one will
serve as an atonement for her crime.
Character List
Briony Tallis
The protagonist of the story and thirteen years old at the beginning of the novel. Briony
is a precocious and talented child, although she is also stubborn, self-centered, and
arrogant. Upon spending time with her slightly older cousin, Lola, Briony longs to be
more grown-up. Having written stories since the age of eleven, Briony sees everything
through the lens of a story and attempts to make sense of the world in that way. As an
adult, Briony gives up her plan of going to Cambridge to work as a trainee nurse to
punish herself for her crime. Briony eventually becomes a successful novelist.

Cecilia Tallis
Briony’s older sister by ten years. At the beginning of the novel, Cecilia has recently
graduated from Cambridge but is unsure of what her next step should be. She feels
frustrated by her own aimlessness but does not want to do much more with her days
than read literature and smoke cigarettes. She is fond of her siblings but feels burdened
by the need to care for her family due to her mother’s illness and her father’s frequent
absences. Cecilia loves Robbie and vows to wait for him after he is wrongfully arrested.

Robbie Turner
The son of the Tallises’ charlady and Cecilia’s childhood friend. Despite Robbie’s lower
social class, he is content with his life, comfortable moving between social circles, and
confident about his future at the beginning of the novel. As evidenced by his behavior
during the war, Robbie is extremely kind and tries his best to help others. He is
passionately in love with Cecilia, but wrongfully imprisoned when accused of rape.

Lola Quincey
Briony’s fifteen-year-old cousin. Lola gives off an impression of sophistication, treating
Briony like a child and taking care of her nine-year-old twin brothers. Lola is
manipulative and has a streak of cruelty, though she is still very much naive at the
beginning of the novel.

Leon Tallis
Brother of Briony and Cecilia. Leon is known as an easygoing optimist who is likely to
only see the best in people.

Emily Tallis
The mother of Leon, Cecilia, and Briony. Self-absorbed and hypocritical, Emily has
frequent migraines and is often unable to perform any parental duties, leaving them to
Cecilia. As a slightly old-fashioned woman, Emily cares more about social class than
other members of her family do, disapproving of her husband’s support of Robbie. Emily
also nurses a childhood grudge against her sister, Hermione, mother of Lola and the
twins.

Jack Tallis
Father of Leon, Cecilia, and Briony. Jack is often absent from the Tallis house, carrying on
affairs in London under the guise of his work as an important government bureaucrat.
Jack pays for Robbie’s education and supported Robbie’s mother when Robbie’s father
left, showing he is usually kind and generous.

Paul Marshall
Leon Tallis’s friend. Paul is heir to a chocolate manufacturing fortune and is originally
seen as a romantic prospect for Cecilia. However, Cecilia finds him exceedingly dull and
stupid.

Pierrot and Jackson Quincey

Lola’s nine-year-old twin brothers who are traumatized by their parents’ divorce. At the
beginning of the novel, they serve as a foil to Briony’s goal of putting on a play. However,
Briony becomes close with them as they grow older.

Corporal Nettle
One of the men with whom Robbie travels to Dunkirk. Briony communicates with Nettle
to learn about Robbie’s time during the war.

Corporal Mace
Another of the men with whom Robbie travels to Dunkirk.

Fiona
Briony’s friend while working as a trainee nurse. Fiona comes from a privileged London
family.

Sister Drummond
Briony’s strict supervisor at the hospital where she works during the war.

Grace Turner
Robbie’s mother and the Tallis family’s maid. Grace never doubts her son’s innocence.

Betty
The Tallis family’s cook who is tough on the Quincey twins.

Hardman
A Tallis family servant.

Danny Hardman
Hardman’s sixteen-year-old son. Cecilia and Robbie mistakenly believe Danny to be
Lola’s true rapist.

Themes
The Power of Storytelling
Structured as a story within a story, Atonement itself is a testament to how powerful
storytelling can be. Briony Tallis, the protagonist, believes from a young age that her
talent for writing and storytelling allows her to control those around her. In the hands of
a thirteen-year-old girl, this talent proves to be a double-edged sword. At the beginning
of the novel, Briony has a proclivity to use her precocious imagination to fill in the
blanks when she is ignorant about certain aspects of a situation. Her relatively sheltered
life causes her to only see the world in stories she can understand. The scene at the
fountain with Cecilia and Robbie vexes Briony because it does not fulfill the archetype of
a damsel in distress and the pauper who rescues her. And due to her lack of awareness
of adult sexuality, she views Cecilia and Robbie’s relationship as violent and coerced
instead of loving and consensual. This habit, along with Briony’s arrogance as a writer
who thinks she is omniscient, leads her to accuse Robbie of a crime he did not commit.
Briony’s insistence on viewing the world through the lens of a story is what causes her
to create her own tale that will lead to the downfall of two people she cares about.
On the other hand, once the fallout from Briony’s crime is complete and she
understands that she made a mistake, she uses her talent to give Cecilia and Robbie the
fictional happy ending that neither lived long enough to experience in real life. While
this may seem insufficient given that they both died long ago, Briony’s story, told with as
much truth as possible, allows Cecilia and Robbie to live on, if only in people’s
imaginations.

The Nature of Perspective

Part One of the novel depicts several events told from different people’s perspectives,
showing how tricky it can be to truly see objective reality. Not only do proximity to and
involvement with an event influence perspective, but so do the unique life experiences
and biases that each person brings to a situation. The scene between Cecilia and Robbie
at the fountain is the first time a misunderstanding occurs due to different people’s
perspectives. Cecilia takes her clothes off and dives into the fountain as a sort of
defiance of Robbie in response to her own attraction. However, Briony believes Cecilia is
acting out of fear of Robbie. When Briony walks into the library, she does not know that
Cecilia and Robbie have admitted their love for each other. To her, small and frail-looking
Cecilia pushed up against the bookshelf by Robbie looks like assault.

It is not only Briony’s limited perspective that causes trouble. Emily’s resentment of her
sister, Hermione, and her desire for Cecilia to get married blind her to the danger
presented by Paul Marshall, as she thinks nothing of Paul speaking to Lola in the nursery
and assumes Lola is being overly dramatic about her injuries. These scenes show how
not questioning one’s own perspective and assumptions can have devastating
consequences.
The Pull of Regret
Although Briony is absolutely sure of herself while accusing Robbie in Part One, by the
time she is eighteen years old, in Part Three, the regret she feels for what she did is
overwhelming. Instead of attending Cambridge, which would allow her to pursue her
dream of becoming a writer, Briony is training as a nurse as penance for her crime. Only
at the end of the novel is it revealed how deep her regret goes. As Cecilia and Robbie
both died in 1940, Briony was never able to make things right with them. Not only did
her crime wrongly put Robbie in jail, but it ultimately led to both of their deaths. Briony
has spent her life trying to do what little she can to preserve the memories of Cecilia and
Robbie. In her own story, Briony does not receive forgiveness from Cecilia and Robbie,
showing she knows that expecting forgiveness for what she did is not plausible even in
fiction. Even while working, falling in love, and getting older, Briony has tried to assuage
her guilt and regret by writing the perfect draft of the story of Cecilia and Robbie, stuck
trying to fix the immovable past.

Childhood versus Adulthood

When the novel begins, Briony is thirteen years old, already on the cusp between
childhood and young adulthood. The arrival of her cousin Lola seems to make Briony
self-conscious of her childish tendencies, and she suddenly has the desire to become an
adult. Briony feels that the events she witnesses between Cecilia and Robbie have
matured her sufficiently, so that by the time of Lola’s assault, she believes she has fully
entered adulthood. However, Briony’s assumptions and ignorance of certain topics show
just how immature she still really is. Her eagerness to go from child to adult overnight
demonstrates why growing up is a process instead of a switch that can be turned on and
off. Even by the time Briony is eighteen, though she has realized that what she did was
wrong, she still justifies her actions and is unable to visit Cecilia or confront Lola or Paul
Marshall. And at the age of seventy-seven, Briony celebrates her birthday in her
childhood home and still feels some of the same resentment toward Lola that she did at
the age of thirteen. Briony’s progress shows that while growing up should not be
rushed, some childish elements of ourselves never fully go away.