Revision Cards - Atonement: A Level, Genre, structure and language

Revise the key points

Atonement is a self-consciously postmodern novel with a self-consciously Modern narrator, often using the technique of narrative called ‘stream of consciousness’, and recurring images/motifs.
But the novel is also ultimately a tragedy, in that it depicts highly sympathetic lovers undone by events (or a Fate) outside of their control.
The novel’s plentiful use of intertextual reference, literary allusion and self-awareness, makes a good case for considering it a postmodern text.
The genre Briony decides upon dictates the story she writes, choosing to produce a romance culminating in union, rejecting a mode of ‘bleakest realism’.

Genre, structure and language

Atonement: A Level

The narrative is in three parts, resembling a three act play, or the divisions favoured by E. M. Forster (e.g. in A Passage to India).
The tripartite structure is not split into chronological sections, but rather punctuated by tragic events – Robbie’s arrest, his death, and finally Briony awaiting her own.
Part One accounts for half of the entire novel, while Part Two (depicting Robbie’s time in France) is considerably shorter than Part Three.
The narrative is non-linear, even within single chapters. For example, Briony’s experience as false witness is described before she has spoken to the raped Lola.

Genre, structure and language

Atonement: A Level

McEwan proceeds in part by repetition and reiteration, for example in the myriad variations of ‘love’ presented in Part One – ‘self-love’; ‘selfless love’; even hatred ‘pure as love’.
Alongside the use of recurring imagery, linguistic echoes in the text link and/or contrast characters and events – e.g. the term ‘Bunyan bags’ reverberates with literary and Christian associations.
The novel both presents words as an equivalent to actions, as in the lovers’ almost entirely letter-based affair, but also as inadequate and limited.
The catalyst of the narrative is based on a single word – a taboo expression included in his ‘obscene draft’ to Cecilia – consider Briony’s reaction to this (p. 94).

Genre, structure and language

Atonement: A Level

Atonement’s imagery creates links across its sections: the vampyric image of Lola thriving on Paul Marshall’s decrepitude recalls Emily’s ‘growth’ when Cecilia retreats into ‘private misery’ six decades previously.
A key image related to the literary theme is the retrospective recasting of Robbie from ‘villain’ to ‘medical prince’, becoming the hero figure from Briony’s Arabella.
There is patterning of imagery as in the Christian, particularly Catholic, ‘rosary’ which chimes with the novel’s title, the hospital ‘padres’ and Briony’s ‘burden’ of ‘self-torment’.
Examples of repeated images include the ‘disembodied’ legs seen by Briony and Robbie, the doomed, devoted moth and the metaphor of life as a work of literature.