Atonement- characters

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  • character analysis
    • Briony
      • motivations
        • External= views about class (accuses R), patriarchy.
        • Internal= a lonely child receiving little attention. Lives in fantasies. Passio for secrets, trying to atone.
      • reader responses
        • unreliable narrator, cyclical structure shows her fanciful imagination, contrast between 'irreparable damage' vs her temporary suffering, final act = self-serving
        • Briony's suffering deserves sympathy, narrative shows she craves forgiveness, She (like Robbie) is victim of the justice system.
      • quotes
        • 'self-pity needed her full attention'
        • 'she was entering an arena of adult emotion'
        • 'a maniac' + 'she was able to reveal that he was the incarnation of evil'
        • 'the truth was in the symmetry'
        • 'taken on nursing as a sort of penance'
        • 'not every child sends a man to prison with a lie'
        • 'It was Paul Marshall'- fictionalised
        • 'a convenient distortion, and the least of my offences against veracity.'
      • criminal/victim?
    • Robbie
      • victim- of Briony's lies, class and war.
      • motivations
        • External= victim of class and perceptions of men
        • Internal= love for C, wish to be a doctor, depression from prison
      • quotes
        • "I've agreed to pay your father back"
        • 'he was a hobby of Jack's, living proof of some levelling principle he had pursued through the years'
        • ''their prisoner'
        • 'he acted like an officer, but he didn't even have a single stripe'
        • 'there was a chance, just a chance of getting back'
        • 'it troubled him that she was destroying a part of herself for his sake.'
        • 'find Cecilia and love her, marry her, and live without shame'
        • 'I want to find him... I want to kill him'
    • Cecilia
      • victim- lover taken away, of war.
      • motivations
        • internal- love for Robbie
      • quotes
        • 'he did not exist, he was banished, and this was also the punishment'
        • ''her parents were absent in their different ways'
        • 'Cecilia's repeated suggestion that it was DH they should be talking to was heard in silence'
        • 'she had cut herself off from her family'
        • 'they chose to believe the evidence of a silly, hysterical little girl'
        • 'I'll wait for you. Come back.'
        • 'I won't ever forgive you.'- fictionalised
    • Paul Marshall
      • criminal- rapes a child, allows innocent man to go to prison, profits from others suffering in war
      • quotes
        • 'Marshall took control of the conversation with a ten-minute monologue'
        • 'Bite it,' he said softly. 'You've got to bite it'
          • ''his young sisters appeared... he woke, hot across the chest and throat, uncomfortably aroused.'
        • 'there was a two-inch scratch'
          • ''his young sisters appeared... he woke, hot across the chest and throat, uncomfortably aroused.'
        • 'he could undercut his competitors and increase his profit margin'
        • 'there it would lie secure in the darkness'- truth, cannot be exposed after marriage
        • 'it has often been remarked upon, how much good he did in the world.'
        • 'defending their good names with a most expensive ferocity
    • Lola Quincey
      • victim/criminal?- ***** by M, broken home.. hides truth, marries M
      • reader response
        • a child from a broken home, ***** by an adult, believes Briony's story.
          • knew perpetrator, let R be sent away. Protects criminal by marrying him. Long and pleasant life.
      • motivations
        • external= manipulated, classism, money?
          • internal= desire to be an adult, need for security?
      • quotes
        • 'bloody bands of chafing'
          • 'the womanly tang of Lola's perfume could not conceal the childish whiff of Germolene'
            • 'the guise of the adult she considered herself at heart to be'
        • 'as lean and fit as a racing dog, and still faithful'
          • 'the scratch on her face was undeniable, the bruising on her arm really rather shocking'
            • 'Lola twisted her shoulder to reveal, high on her arm, a long scratch'
              • 'refugees from a bitter domestic civil war'
          • 'making an effort not to cry'
            • 'Briony's compassion made Lola's eyes fill'
              • 'I'll thank you to not talk about them in front of the children.'
    • Emily
      • quotes
        • 'she lay in the dark and knew everything'
        • 'her mother had always lived in an invalids shadow land'
        • 'illness had stopped her giving her children all a mother should'
        • 'Emily wanted her daughter well away from Robbie Turner'
    • Jack Tallis
      • quotes
        • 'Jack Tallis did not have it in him to turn out a young women and her child.'
          • 'his presence imposed order and allowed freedom'
            • 'I'm going to put the telephone down now, Emily, because i'm going to call the police'
          • 'lived after his second marriage'
    • Leon Tallis
      • 'sweet-natured and content and surrounded by successful friends'
        • ''who had the pure gift of avoiding responsibility, would not assume his fathers role'
      • 'conjuring a world of good intentions and pleasant outcomes'

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