Atonement Character List

Briony Tallis

Briony is the novel’s protagonist.
At the novel’s outset, she is a precocious girl with a gift for writing.
However, she is also a petulant child, both naïve and certain of her understanding, and her selfish stubbornness leads her to misinterpret a romantic encounter between her sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner.
This jealous misconception leads her to wrongly implicate Robbie in the **** of her cousin, Lola Quincey, a crime for which Robbie serves three years in prison.
Later in the book, Briony becomes a nurse and works to make up for the wrongs she has committed against Robbie.
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.
She narrates the book’s conclusion as an elderly woman who has been diagnosed with encroaching terminal dementia.

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Briony’s free-spirited sister.
Early in the novel she realizes, somewhat to her surprise, that she is in love with Robbie Turner.
When Briony’s incrimination of Robbie alienates him from the Tallis family, Cecilia cuts off her own ties to her family and promises to wait for Robbie.
She becomes a nurse, which likely inspires her younger sister to do the same.
Briony and Cecilia have a limited re-connection during the war, as Briony tries unsuccessfully to legally take back her false testimony against Robbie.
However, at the very end of the novel, Briony explains that Cecilia was in fact killed during a bombing raid on London, shortly after Robbie was killed in combat.

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The bright, attractive, and ambitious son of Grace Turner, who is the Tallis family’s charlady.
Robbie is studying at Cambridge to be a doctor, and his education is funded by the Tallises, who treat him like a son.
He is also passionately in love with Cecilia Tallis.
However, he is wrongly imprisoned when Briony misidentifies him as the man who ***** Lola.
After three years in prison, he enlists to fight in World War II in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Later in the novel, Briony finds him at Cecilia’s apartment and attempts to make amends, though he is clearly still furious with Briony.
Though still later in the novel it is revealed that Briony invented this encounter as a kind of atonement, to give him a life with Cecilia even though he was in fact killed in combat.

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Briony’s blasé cousin, two years her senior.
She is ***** by Paul Marshall and is so shaken by the assault that she accepts Briony’s assertion that Robbie Turner was the culprit even though it seems clear that she knows that Paul was her assailant.
Lola later marries Paul, despite the fact that she ***** her, in what is implied is a kind of agreement to both hide their complicity in Robbie’s false indictment and because marriage to Paul will make her wealthy.
She becomes a well-known London socialite.

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A somewhat dull friend of Leon’s who is heir to a chocolate-making fortune.
His family company manufactures Amo bars.
When he visits the Tallis family at the beginning of the book, the family initially imagines that he might be a good match for Cecilia.
She is uninterested in him, however, and he notices Lola’s good looks even though she is fifteen years old.
Paul ****s Lola but lets the blame fall upon Robbie.
Later, he marries Lola—which, it is implied, is a kind of deal that gains Lola’s allegiance despite his **** of her by making her wealthy and allowing them both to hide their role’s in Robbie’s false indictment.
He eventually becomes a philanthropist and fixture of London high society.

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Briony and Cecilia’s mother, and the wife of Jack Tallis.
She is a relatively hands-free parent, in part because she suffers from debilitating migraines.
She is something of a snob, and less enthusiastic than her husband about the Tallis family’s efforts to fund Robbie’s education.
She also resents her sister—Lola’s mother—who she sees as always stealing attention.

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Briony and Cecilia’s father, and the husband of Emily Tallis.
Mr. Tallis is an absent parent because his work as a high-ranking government bureaucrat consumes most of his time, particularly during the tensions leading up to World War II.
Mr. Tallis appears to be a kind, principled man—he funds Robbie Turner’s education and supports his mother, Grace, who works as a housecleaner at the Tallis estate—but he abruptly ends his aid to Robbie when the boy is falsely blamed for ****** Lola.

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Pierrot and Jackson are Lola’s twin younger brothers.
At the book’s beginning, they appear as rowdy and capricious preadolescent boys, and the drama that takes place passes over their heads.
Pierrot returns at the end of the book, when he leads his grandchildren in a performance of Briony’s play, The Tales of Arabella, to honour Briony’s birthday.

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