Stupid Younger Sisters
Briony is the pesky younger sister that everyone, even people without sisters, despises. However, as they do in real life, family members do get over their hate and learn to appreciate their sibling’s point of view. They even learn to ,I dare say, love them. This is pretty much how my relationship with Briony evolved, it started out as mere dislike; similar to meeting a younger sibling for the first time. Then morphed into full blown hate; like the first time you notice that they get more attention than you. I do realize that most siblings don’t send people to jail over something that they didn’t do. I believe though, that I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that when they do something that hurts you, it feels like Robbie felt when he was sent to jail. By the time I followed Robbie through the war my rage at her betrayal had simmered back down to a strong dislike. Much like the truce that eventually comes after a big fight. Furthering this drawn out analogy, there is always two sides of the story and Briony doesn’t deserve all the blame. Cee was stupid enough to basically strip infront of Robbie, outside, which in that day and age just isn’t done. To add to the stupidity Robbie types up that letter by which even by today’s standards is very crude. It’s just easy to hate Briony because in the end Robbie’s the one that gets sent to jail.
Finally we get to go back into the demon’s head herself, in part 3, and we experience what it’s like to be Briony post rape. Frankly my opinion of her did a complete 180, just like how a brother comes to love his sibling after realizing, it’s not their fault that they were born after you. It wasn’t Briony’s fault that she was foolish enough to think she understood what was going on. Everyone she had ever met had blown smoke up her bum telling her that she her plays were “stupendous” (McEwan 4) and in turn making her believe that she knew more than she actually did. Her superiority is apparent in the way McEwan writes her parts, “A universe reduced to what was said in it was tidiness indeed, almost to the point of nullity, and to compensate, every utterance was delivered at the extremity of some feeling or other.”(McEwan 7). Just the way she talks about writing kind of makes you want to slap her. The question then, is this a result of her personality or her victorian upbringing. Considering the fact that she spends the rest of her life trying to make up for the fact that she betrayed her sister’s and Robbie’s trust, I have to say the victorian childhood is at blame.
Moreover, this doesn’t give us a reason to like her yet. When Briony is working as a nurse and we get to live through the horror of what she witnesses, I was sympathetic but she still hadn’t earned my friendship yet. What she did next did. She actually found a way to earn forgiveness when no one was left alive to forgive her. She, in her own way, made a temple to the love story that was Robbie and Cee’s life. If you compare this to other acts of love that have transcended generations, the Taj Mahal with famous love story that still brings people to look at it. Briony's temple takes form as a book but her words still earn the same reverence as you would by gazing at the Taj Mahal. The fact that she didn’t give up on trying to earn her forgiveness is what made her into someone I liked. How many of us can say that we would continue to pursue forgiveness when there is no one left to forgive you. I guess to sum it up I like her because I admire her determination.
Comment on Rayne’s:
While I do agree with most of what you said, going as far as to say that Briony was selfless in the end seems wrong to me. Probably because she went through this whole ordeal of earning forgiveness for herself… If the forgiveness is for herself than she can’t really be selfless can she? I do however agree that she is, by the end of the book, a woman to be admired and respected, mainly because she had the determination to see her forgiveness through to the end no matter what the cost. In the end, the cost was not being able to see her masterpiece get published which I think ends the book perfectly.
By Brett Glass
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