Can We Ever Really Forgive Ourselves?
Guilt is a grave emotion one might endure for the course of an entire lifetime. Depending on the offense one might commit and the lasting effects that the individual bestows on another (or on them) may or may not determine if forgiveness is ever or even an option. None of us are without our own faults, and many times through these imperfections we will make mistakes and sometimes the consequences of these gaffes can never be resolved. Hopefully if the error in our judgment is an unpleasant mishap (without malice), generally we might expect forgiveness; yet if our error is one of premeditation, presuming to injure another being (albeit physically or psychologically), then forgiveness is up to the one whom we have maimed. More often than not without any professional type of therapy, the guilty party as well as the offended may never quite understand the reasoning of the one who has been slanderous or the depths regarding the succession of what transpired to compel one to execute such a malicious act. Immaturity is no excuse. Most of us, if we are brought up in a wholesome family faction, we know right from wrong. However sometimes if family and the connection to it is so unimportant, and one’s fantasies are one’s realities, then one can (and may often) rely only on one’s own discretion. And as a child, this can be a recipe for disaster.
And Briony Tallis is just such a child. Crushed over a “school-girl crush” which will obviously be unreciprocated, Briony Tallis turns an entire family’s life upside down which will never be attuned again. Whether or not this is her reasoning for implicating Robbie for the rape of Lola, Briony’s accusation is unmistakably a criminal offense. True, it is not that the Tallis family is a jubilant family initially, but the Tallis family appears to be a family of accepting “of what is” without questioning. Briony who lives within her own fantasies carries on as though she is an adult (and although not an adult, but one who needs to be in control, assuming that she is one) takes it upon herself to direct others lives through her own fantasies which is enough for her to create a “real” monstrous life for the ones that she actually cares for. And honestly, I wonder if she knows what it is to care for anyone.
After a few years of suffering over her excessive fallacy, realizing the damage she has caused, Briony instead of attending Cambridge, decides to enroll in the nursing school her sister Cecilia attended. She wants to be forgiven; not only by Cecilia and Robbie, but she wants to forgive herself as well. By scrubbing down floors, washing blankets, making beds, and scrubbing bedpans on a daily basis should surely overthrow this guilt she possesses. But it doesn’t, and in fact it never will.
Near the end of this novel, Briony decides to rewrite history. And I was insulted. I guess it wasn’t really Briony writing this, but McEwan who decides to have Briony writing this “fantasy” chapter. After reading about Robbie’s circumstances while at war and who I learned of Robbie’s character to be, I was certain that Robbie Turner was a very conscientious, thoughtful, selfless, and a very good soldier, not to mention a very good man. In the “fantasy scene,” where Briony, Cecilia and Robbie reconnect after several years, McEwan is now bringing back to the novel the writing from the youthful fantasies of Briony. An example to contradict the “fantasy scene” would be that from Part II in this novel where Robbie contemplates wishing that he can forgive Briony: “He did not think his resentment of her could ever be erased. Yes, she was a child at the time, and he did not forgive her. He would never forgive her. That was the lasting damage.” Robbie is struggling with this. He isn’t dismissing the possibility of forgiving Briony, but he can’t, and it is understandable. And yet still this is a very kind disposition for one who has had their life stolen away from them. However in the later chapter, the “fantasy chapter” near the end of the novel when Briony, Cecilia and Robbie are in the small apartment and when Robbie states, “I’m torn between breaking your stupid neck here and taking you outside and throwing you down the stairs”…it just made no sense to me that Robbie would become so erratic. His thoughts at the end of Part II were one of regret and sadness that he couldn’t forgive, and now he is threatening violent harm? I didn’t buy it. And secondly, what made this Part II of this book so tender and loving (my favorite part until the final chapter) was that no matter how desperate Robbie’s circumstances became, he kept remembering Cecilia’s promise that she would wait for him. And what made this part of the book more intense for me, is that I was certain Robbie knew he was dying, but was fighting with all his might, with all his mind, with all his fevers, with all his delusions from the fevers, that he was going to make it back to Cecilia no matter what he had to face!!! His determination and his love for her were more than admirable.
(An insertion – a rewrite 11/16/10) It appeared today in class that a few of you were aghast with me for saying that I was insulted with the “fantasy chapter,” where Cecilia, Robbie and Briony were trying to connect on how to exonerate Robbie, but it had already occurred to me that Robbie was dead from Part II. And for me, that is why I loved Part II so much…his desire to return to Cecilia, the horror he had to endure to reach her, and yet that didn’t stop him. On the second page of Part II (page 180), after seeing the leg in the tree, after vomiting up ahead of the two corporals, “He made use of this moment alone to look at his wound. It was on his right side, just below his rib cage, about the size of a half crown. It wasn’t looking so bad after he washed away the dried blood yesterday. Though the skin around it was red…” Robbie had an infection, and through Part II of the novel, Robbie had fevers (because of infection), and became delusional at times (because of the fevers and infection), and Robbie was smart…he was planning to be a doctor someday after all. Surely he knew he was in need of antibiotics. I believe Robbie and I both knew he was going to die (clarification…I do know this is fiction). To reiterate…why I got so upset with the fantasy scene. I felt as though I was being duped. And I was right.
As much as I disliked Briony after her major faux pas, in the final chapter of this book, I care for her more than probably anyone else does, again as I did in the beginning of this novel. She is an older lady now, resigning to the fact that there is nothing more she could have done or can do now to put right the past, and must now just have to accept her life as it was, and is at this moment. There is a tranquil quality in how she now carries herself (perhaps it is her dementia, but I don’t believe that), and there is almost a classy inferiority that she now possesses where I begin to do a little forgiving myself. And this chapter was the twist for me.
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