What's Not to Like? Heather Bergstrom

What's Not to Like?

Heather Bergstrom

Personally, I found Briony to be self-centred, pretentious and show signs of sociopathic behaviour but despite her less than admirable traits she did have some redeeming qualities. (Harsh but true none the less) Rather than trying to comment on events that happened in parts one through three, I want to talk about Briony as a person in London 1999 and as she wrote herself to be in her book. 
(This being if the events in the book she is writing is based on true events, I'm not even sure anymore this book is a jumbled mess to me)

To begin with, Briony created herself as a character in her book to be just as outlined above. You don't like the character Briony, you find her annoying, manipulative, you don't like her decisions and become frustrated with her over the course of the reading. But she wrote that part of her life to make her seem as such, she made herself a character you genuinely dislike. If her book is published after she, Lola and Paul Marshall die, she will live on forever as this unlikeable character. She almost does it as a way of punishing herself for the events she cannot correct.

My next point goes along with the first, Briony made a mistake as a child, confessed and tried to redeem herself through her writing. Once again making her live on as an awful character through her text, but it was in fact telling the harsh truth. Her mistaking Paul
Marshall for Robbie was a mistake a child made that had awful consequences. Though the
confession may have come far too late, she did confess and in a way that she will always
be disliked for.

Lastly, she gave Cee and Robbie a happy ending. Though neither Robbie or Cee survived the war, she took it upon herself to give their tale an end it deserves. Surely enough she felt guilty for the life she deprived Cee and Robbie of, and no amount of apologies could fix her problem. Her solution, probably to ease her guilt and do something nice for the people whose lives she ruined, was to give her sister and Robbie a proper ending that they could never have. “I can no longer think what purpose would be served if, say, I tried to persuade my reader by indirect means, that Robbie Turner died of septicemia at Bay Dunes on 1 June 1940, or that Cecila was killed in September of the same year by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station.” (McEwan 350)

You could almost compare her character to Hamlet, he's a manipulative intelligent bastard that seems to be able to control the characters around him, much like Briony. She is writing a novel about events that happened in her life, and making HERSELF seem like the villian in the story. Though the story may not be completely true and she may be trying to satisfy her readers, she is changing the story to give it the proper ending. She is manipulating characters with her words to get the outcome she wants. (cough Hamlet cough)

All in all, sure Briony made a huge mistake but she did try to redeem herself and make up for it in the only way she knew how, through writing.



To comment on Alex's post:

I agree completely with Alex's first point.

"she wrote this book in order to start grieving over her mistake. This shows that Briony is kind hearted and that not only has she acknowledged her mistake she has gone forth with making this book as a way as Robbie and Cee forgiving her." 


Briony was just a kid when she made a horrible mistake and she wrote the book as a way to fix a problem that is impossible to resolve. Though a novel may not seem like a fair trade for the death and unhappiness of two individuals, what can you do when both the people who have wronged are long dead? Most people would have probably suffered through the guilt, but at least Briony sought forgiveness and redemption in some way. Briony was a writer so what better way to rewrite and confess her story than through a book?