The End of the World as We Know It

Briony is a dreamer, always looking for the inspirational story, whether it is in her imagination or inspired by reality. The problem is that she does not always know how to separate the two. As described by Briony’s mother, Emily, Briony is “always off and away in her mind, grappling with some unspoken, self-imposed problem, as though the weary, self-evident world could be reinvented by a child.” And, because Briony is a child, no matter how hard she tries not to be, she cannot be blamed for the misinterpretations that she makes.

After watching Cecilia dive half-naked into a fountain, Briony receives an apology letter from Robbie, which she is meant to deliver to Cecilia. She reads it, and believes that Robbie’s intentions are to attack Cecilia. Her naivety and lack of knowledge and/or experience makes her overreact and change her opinion of Robbie, regardless of how long she has known him. She believes him to be a monster, even though she has no actual proof.

Briony gets her “proof” when she catches Cecilia and Robbie having sex in the library. She describes the incident as an “attack, a hand-to-hand fight. The scene was so entirely a realization of her worst fears that she sensed that her overanxious imagination had projected the figures onto the packed spines of books.” Cecilia and Robbie could not meet Briony’s eyes, which only confirmed her belief in that something horrible happened. She compares Robbie to a hulking mass engulfing Cecilia. Shocked by what she has just witnessed, Briony cannot help but run from the library, even after Cecilia and Robbie have both left.

From the very beginning of his novel Atonement , Ian McEwan paints a vibrant characterization of Briony Tallis. At only eleven, Briony is very mature for her age, having already written and meticulously prepared the performance of her seven-page play “The Trials Of Arabella.” McEwan states that Briony “was one of those children possessed by the desire to have the world just so.” This need for perfection stretches from the tidiness of her room to her love for writing; it is through this hobby that Briony is able to tame an unruly world.

 Briony’s desire for idealism creates a divide between her imagination and reality. Despite knowing about her aunt and uncle’s deteriorating marriage, Briony chooses to give it no thought for not only was divorce an improper subject, but it “offered no opportunities for the author.” This rejection of reality in order to incorporate her own beliefs about how the world should be is a common trend in Briony’s character.

 That being said, it quickly becomes apparent that while Briony’s need for perfection is marked by the innocence of a young girl (it is also important to note that in the movie adaptation of this novel, Briony is seen always wearing white, the color of purity), it can also dramatically affect her perception of reality. For instance, the scene in which she spies on Cecilia and Robbie from a wide-open window (perhaps a very clever metaphor on the famous phrase “Imagination is the window to the world”) Briony attempts to conjure the meaning of the scene. A marriage proposal? Blackmail? Threats? This specific part marks an important part of the plot because it is the point where Briony’s world of perfection slowly begins to fall apart.

 “Now it could no longer be fairy-tale castles and princesses, but the strangeness of the here and now, of what passed between people…and what power one could have over the other, and how easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong.”

 Confused by what she sees but does not understand, Briony decides to write this scene from three different points of view, all of which could  possibly be tainted by her biased eye. Hence, “the truth had become a ghostly invention.”