Redefining Briony (Or Briony redefining herself)

By: Stefan Soto
Briony is written so inconsistently in comparison between part one and part three that you really need to ask yourself if they really are the same person at all? Briony in part one is selfish, naive, sucked into white and black thinking, and judgemental. Briony in part three is genuinely concerned with other people, remorseful, and caring. If she's changed so much that she's only a shadow of what she used to be, can she really be considered the same person and therefore accountable for her actions in part one? Her actions in part three show her kindness, so after forgiving part one, she is at least a respectable person.

After the court case is through there is a great quote "How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime" (McEwan 162) which pretty much tells it as it is. Briony fucked up bad. She knows she fucked up and these "methods of self torture" is what causes her transformation. By the time that she is working as a nurse four years later she now cares about people beyond helping herself. The French boy asks her "'Do you love me?' She hesitated. 'Yes.' No other reply was possible. Besides, for that moment, she did" because he's about to die and she loves him because he's far from home and lonely and suffering just like she is. She's not the same person anymore and this transformation and repentance has absolved her of what she did and makes her into the good person she becomes.

Similarly, if a man gets out of prison for a serious crime but takes action to turn his life around for the better than he is in my eyes no longer truly guilty of that crime. What he did has still been done but his debt has been paid and he now deserves a chance to return to society. Briony has paid her debt in remorse as well as the dedication of her entire life to her atonement and for that I feel that she is a redeemed as well as respectable character.

In response to Roman's post, I don't think that Briony is at all a sociopath. Doing something wrong is not sociopathic, being okay with doing something wrong is. And Briony is very not okay with what she did. I'm somewhat confused how Briony feeling victimized and being able to manipulate people makes you like her, but sure if you value that I guess that's cool. Personally I wouldn't pick my friends around that but too each his own I suppose. That being said I agree with your last point about Briony's nihilism at the end how she's realized that her atonement doesn't actually matter that's a good point.

Brett Glass

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

Fuck Briony... Or Nahhh? by Hannah Vinagre

The entire story of Atonement gives us the impression that Briony is an overall selfish character that is only preoccupied with her own well being. From the beginning of the story, we see Briony making herself the center of attention. As the story unfolds, so does Briony, and we slowly discover new sides to personality we didn't think existed. She becomes empathetic, caring, and considerate as she gets older and the reader is able to see Briony's intentions first hand.

Although Briony carries the blame for Robbie's prison sentence, she is certainly not at an age where she would be capable of making rational decisions in other peoples favor. Her immaturity and ego give her the confidence to determine the fate of another human being. As time goes on, Briony finds herself regretting her past decisions and wishes she could take it back, she realizes her mistakes once she sees her family slowly falling apart of her one mistake. When we reach "London 1999", we learn that the book was really a story written by the elderly Briony, to explain her life and the lives of others she destroyed. She is empathetic through Part 2 & 3 because we see Briony reflecting on her past, even though she was an adult at this point in time, we see that she has spent all those years reflecting of the pain she has knowingly placed onto others, and doing all she could to make things right again.

Once we learn that Briony actually wrote this story and sent it in to be published, we create a new perspective on why she might have done what she did. Briony writes about herself enrolling into the war and served as a nurse for several years while Cee and Robbie were also serving in the war. Briony changes drastically from the time she was a teenager to the lady she becomes while she's helping in the war. It seems as though she truly cares for others and doing the right thing, especially once she realized how big of an impact she made on her family with her poor decision making. She develops this caring personality, where she lives life doing her best to serve those in need. All shes known in life is destruction and hate, she begins to love bringing joy and hope to those who truly have none. This can be seen as a way Briony has learned to cope with the guilt she holds from her past.

At the end of the book we can put all the pieces of the puzzle together and decipher Briony's intentions while writing this story. We realize she had to live her entire life carrying an extremely large amount of guilt on her shoulders, which takes her decades to come to terms with. Her family never forgave her before they died, and worse, despite all her efforts to bring Cee and Robbie back together once again, she failed. She was left with no one to trust and no one to confide in, but still found a way to share her story and express her sorrow and regret that she had in her heart all those years. At her old age, she is very considerate of the lives she has ruined and the feelings she has hurt with her actions. She created this life story for her to publicly display how sorry she is and how she would do anything in order to reverse the damage she has done.

Briony has accepted her mistakes and knows there is no receiving forgiveness from her loved ones, only forgiveness from herself. She says, "There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her" (McEwan, 350). Us as the reader understand that for fifty-nine years, Briony has done everything in her power to make things right, but unfortunately just couldn't do it. By the end of the story, Briony does not desire the forgiveness of those she did wrong, but mostly from herself, that way she can move on with life in peace knowing that what's done is done.


Comment:
I personally enjoyed Heather's blog the most because of her basic interpretation of Briony's actions. I agree that Briony made a foolish mistake as a child but still did what she could to cope with it. Everyone has a way of getting over things, and clearly for Briony, she desired the forgiveness of Cee and Robbie all those years but then realized she must forgive herself in order to live on with a clean conscience. I took Heather's opinion on Briony as 'everyone makes mistakes and lives with guilt for their wrong doings, but despite your rough character, we all deal with emotions equally and we all cope with them in our own ways'.

Blinded By Hate by Jadelyn Backshall

Blinded By Hate

As we all made our way through reading Atonement, we were able to have class discussions that gave us all the opportunity to vocalize our hate for the one and only Briony. The real question is, were we all too quick to jump the gun? As we read on through part 3 and the London, 1999 section, Briony reveals a new, more mature side of herself that we didn't get to see as a reader through her child hood days.

The one thing that I have started to love about Briony that many of us didn't get to see is the fact that she truly cares about her family, and even the people around her that are wounded from war, or the new friendships she has made. Briony is a truly caring person.

Yes, I understand many of you are probably questioning where I'm getting this idea from, especially the whole caring for the family thing, but just take a look a little deeper into why she does the things she does.
When Briony accuses Robbie of raping her sister Cee, it was because she truly believed that was what had happened. We all need to take into consideration the immature age she was at, and how jumping to these sorts of conclusions would be easy to come by. "Did you think it then? She fumbled her words. "Yes, yes and no. I wasn't certain." "And what makes you so certain now?" ..." Growing up.". (McEwan, 323) Just like any young child, they always want to be right, and they always want to impress their elders, but I feel that Briony was doing it also to save her sister. Briony and Cee were extremely close, as stated in the novel Cee acted as a motherly figure for Briony. When Briony saw what was happening in the library and read the letter it came across as more violent then it should have and Briony just didn't want Cee getting hurt.

Moving forward into part 3, we get to see Briony dealing with war times and the consequences of war through men and their injuries. Briony became a nurse at the hospital where she took care of many wounded patients day in and day out. This experience was definately a life changing and eye opening experience for Briony. The moment you realize Briony truly cares about her patients is the part where Sister Drummond tells Briony to go speak to Luc. This young fellow had lost half his head including parts of his brain, meaning he was not going to last much longer. Briony sat with Luc holding his hands and agreeing with everything he had been saying and asking, this wasn't for her happiness but for Luc's happiness. She cared about the young man enough to make him happy. "Do you love me?"..."Yes" No other reply was possible. Besides, for that moment, she did. He was a lovely boy..." (McEwan, 292)

Lastly, Briony cares extremely about her family as stated in the first point. She wants nothing more then the forgiveness of both Cee and Robbie for the things she has done in the past. Briony waits five years until she finally goes out and searches for Cee (presumably because she thinks Robbie is dead) and Cee wants nothing to do with it. Briony finally gets to say a word, and Robbie comes storming in, and in this moment i don't think Briony knows what to think, i think she just knows she's happy that her sister is able to be with Robbie and live a loving life together. Although both characters are extremely mad at Briony, she still sticks around until given orders. When given the orders that she thinks will give forgiveness she sets out on her journey and proceeds to start them. "Just do all the things we've asked." (McEwan, 329). The one quest was for Briony to write a long letter for Robbie, since both Robbie and Cee pass away, Briony writes this novel in hope for forgiveness, and less weight on her old self.

Overall, Briony once was a little naive, immature girl who came across as self-centred, but in the end she grew into this amazing author who didn't care about just herself but all the people who influences her life, and thoughts everyday.



Comment:

I'd like to reflect on Hayley Liskos post. I one hundred percent agree with her statement. Hayley kind of jumps off my ideas as well. Guilt and helping Robbie and Cee to no longer hate her is all that she is looking for, which is exactly my ideas from a different point of view. Briony just wants Robbie and Cee to live together in happiness without her mistake of accusing Robbie of such absurd behavior ruining their lives together. If Briony ever received forgiveness she would no longer have the guilt she is feeling as an older women for the mistakes she made as a young lady. In the end of the story we all know that when she finally finishes creating her novel to Robbie and Cee, that she is content in knowing that she has done what she had to do, she is finally guilt free and can die in peace.

How dumb were we when we were 13? Rebecca

Briony: Another Stupid Teenager 

Rebecca Albers

Throughout the entire novel, I had troubles deciding whether I sympathized with Briony, or wanted to repeatedly slap her in the face for being so naive and selfish. By the time I was finished, I truly felt bad for Briony and the mistakes she made as a foolish kid. After all, how stupid and naive were we at 13?

From 1935 until we begin to near the end of Briony’s life in 1999, it is clear she is simply a product of her upbringing. As she grows up and matures, she begins to realize how foolish she was as a child. Although one’s upbringing is not always the best defence, or even a defence at all, Briony is not entirely responsible for the one mistake that ends up haunting her for the 64 years following the horrible accusation made against Robbie. However, if Briony had not been a privileged spoiled brat, she would have no need spending her entire life searching for forgiveness. 

In Part 1 of the novel, Briony is simply a product of the Victorian values of her parents. As a 13 year old girl, her primary influence would be a family. In Victorian times, sex was extremely taboo, and never talked about. Her mother does everything she can to hide the affair going  How can the blame be placed entirely on Briony, when she was only a child not fully capable of developing her own thoughts and ideas? Everyone else around her did not question anything that Briony said, they just took her words to be the truth. She was a storyteller after all. Telling and writing stories is what she spent her free time doing. Later on, Briony admits that she was unsure that it was even Robbie that she saw with Lola that night. She states that she simply “Saw a man his height”(McEwan 327). She had no clear evidence to send another to prison for 4 years, yet that is just what she did. Nowadays, the shaky testimony of a 13 year old girl would never stand up in court without any other credible evidence another evidence. Briony ended up taking fully responsibility for the outcome, when she wasn't the only one who played had a role in sending Robbie to jail. 

As the story progresses through time, we begin to see Briony struggle with her actions. Near the beginning of Part 3, she slowly begins to realize that what she did, and that there is little chance of ever coming back from what she did. 

After the war is over, and Robbie and Cee are (possibly?) dead, Cee slowly begins to realize that the only person who still needs forgiveness is herself. The two people she hurt the most are dead. Briony spends the majority of her life trying to give Cee and Robbie the life and love that she mistakenly took away from them. She spends her entire life trying to come to terms with her actions. 

As we later discover, the novel is Briony writing Parts 1 through 3 and trying to come to terms with her death. She realizes what a mistake she made. Since she realizes this, I believe Briony wrote herself as such a miserable, bratty kid to try and convey how sorry she is and what a big mistake she made. In the letter she receives after sending in her first draft, it is clear that much of the detail (if it even existed in the first place) was not included. CC gives her suggestions that later end up in the final draft. While Briony is coming to terms with what she does, she fails to include the truth in her story. She makes sure that she looks like this perfect little angel who could do no wrong. However, as time passes, Briony realizes that what she did was wrong. So we end up with the final story. Briony is perceived as this good for nothing brat, while the readers feel bad for Cee and Robbie’s destroyed love affair.

Briony was simply the product of her time. She couldn’t help her upbringing. When she finally realized she played a part in sending an innocent man to jail, she spends her entire life searching for her atonement. 

_______________________________________________________________________

Heather raised an interesting point on Briony writing her character so she can live on forever after Paul Marshall, Lola and herself die off. She says that this is a way of punishing herself forever. If this is the case, I don’t know if Briony would be doing it just to punish herself. Even as Briony begins to see what she did was wrong, a part of the old Briony still remains. When the play is finally being performed, she says “I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been”(McEwan 336). It can be seen both ways, she may want to punish herself, or she may be doing it to ensure the spotlight is always on her. The outlet and mission for Briony publishing her book, all depends on whether or not you view Briony as a villain or not. 

Briony isn't a true bitch after all

Many people see Briony as a very selfish and evil character in the novel Atonement. But if you look deeper into her character and look at the big picture, you can see who she actually is. I believe Briony is a good person with a rough past. She has done wrong, but didn't fully understand the situation and spends the rest of her miserable life reminiscing and trying to fix her guilt.

The number one reason that I believe Briony isn’t deep down a horrible person is because in part one she is to young to understand what is truly going on. In this first one she is merely an immature child that does not get what she is actually doing. She is a child in an adult situation, and makes a bad decision. When she catches Cee and Robbie having sex, and then later witnesses the rape, she assumes what any young child would of assumed, the worst. “That man’s a maniac. A maniac. The word had refinement, and the weight of medical diagnosis” (McEwan 112). In her mind, she is trying to protect her sister and she thinks lying to the cops and stretching the story is going to help. She doesn’t realize that it will only drastically make things worse for her and Cee’s, Cee’s and Robbies, and Robbie and her family’s relationships.

My second point for Briony being a good person, is that she realizes her mistake and then tries to make up for what she has done. Later on in the story Birony is now old and mature enough to see that she had messed up and feels very guilty about it. Throughout the novel she changes her life to make herself feel like she is helping other people. For example she was accepted to university and then changed her mind and became a nurse. I believe she picked this profession because she wants opportunities to help other people to lessen the feeling of guilt. She struggles with forgiveness and that itself represents the fact that she acknowledges that she has done wrong. No evil character would feel remorse or have a guilty conscious if they truly didn’t care about anyone accept them selves.

My third point for Briony actually having a heart, and not being as cold blooded as most see her to be is because she tried to redeem her self through her writing this story. "There was our crime-Lola's, Marshall's, mine-and from the second version onward, I set out to describe it. I've regarded it as my duty to disguise nothing-the names, the places, the exact circumstances-I put it all there as a matter of historical record" (McEwan 349) In this quotation she is expressing her feelings of extreme guilt and how she wants to tell the truth of the story through her perspective, this book. By telling the truth in this book she makes herself out as a character that most would hate but she does show she is a genuinely a good person because she confesses and shows real remorse.

Comment: @erin harper

I agree with Erin that Briony was to “young and naive” to be held labeled and held responsible for the rest of her life on her actions in part one. Briony was young and cared about her sister and tried to do the right thing, which ended in the exact opposite. I disagree with you saying that she doesn't want characters to forgive her. In my opinion I believe all she truly wants is forgiveness but it is far to late for that to ever happen, so she just accepts the fact. She doesn't wish to suffer but knows and feels that it wont happen and there is no way to now fix this depressing situation.

Empathy is necessary

Atonement is not a book that is meant to please the reader, and when it does give the reader some sort of satisfaction, it doesn’t forget to completely reverse this effect by the end of the book. Not only this, but all of the unfortunate events that occur throughout the novel are credited to one source: Briony. This makes it extremely easy to hate her from the very start of the novel, and this may be an irreversible feeling for some people. However, part of me feels as though we’re a little too harsh on her. When you take all of the circumstances into consideration, it’s easier to understand where she’s coming from. Briony made one mistake, when she was extremely young, and although it had detrimental effects on two people she cares about, she still tried to make up for it for the rest of her life.

For starters, she was only a simple child when she made the biggest mistake of her life. I think this fact, in conjunction with her good intentions, is something that is often overlooked by the reader. Kids do stupid things all the time, and there is no denying it. Their imaginations are wild, and sometimes it’s difficult for them to tell when they’re being irrational. This doesn’t necessarily justify what she did, but it is the first step towards explaining and understanding what happened. When Robbie asks Briony what caused her to realized that what she did was wrong, Briony replied by saying “Growing up” (McEwan, 323). Although Briony wrote this section of the book, and it didn’t “really happen”, she’s writing it honestly and it is what she would hypothetically say to Robbie if that situation were to occur.

Secondly, Briony was literally stuck in the past throughout her entire life because she couldn’t get over the terrible thing she had done. She made a mistake, but what magnified the effect of this mistake was the terrible impact it had on someone she looked up to and loved: Cecilia. The way Briony feels about Cecilia is heartwarming and saddening at the same time. Throughout the novel, she envies Cecilia, wants to protect her, and only speaks good of her. During the third section of the book, Briony describes Cecilia as having a “noldly sensual [face], with an accentuated bow of the full purplish lips. The eyes were dark and enlarged) (McEwan, 314). Briony also describes Cecilia and being “more beautiful than Briony remembered her” (McEwan, 314). This shows how highly Briony thinks of her sister.

It is evident that Briony only wants what is best for her sister and Lola, and it proves that her intentions were always pure when it came to those around her. She was only a 13 year old girl who was trying to protect her family. Good intentions, bad execution. This reminds me of a freaky Japanese horror film that I watched a long time ago. I don't remember the name, however the general plot-line was that a girl was trying to protect her twin sister from their mother because she thought the mother was trying to kill her. Turns out the girl is insane and hallucinated all of the bad things she thought her mother had done. She also hallucinated her sister’s existence because, in reality, the girl killed her sister a few years back. The girl cared a lot for her twin sister, just like Briony cares a lot for Cecilia. However, both the girl and Briony end up hurting the person that they care about.

The fact that Briony tried so hard to reach forgiveness is very admirable. It may not have been the best idea to practically spoil her entire life because she refuses to forgive herself, but nonetheless, it shows how much she cared about the mistake made. She also cares a lot for her sister and the rest of her family. The novel doesn't mention anything else that went terribly wrong in her life, so it seems as though Briony learned from her mistake, and lived a moderately humble life.

My reply to Louwyn’s response:

I completely agree with Louwyn, and especially with her introduction. I do also believe that we, as readers, are quick to nit-pick the faults of each character. This point is even more evident when it comes to characters that are shown in a bad light, as Briony tends to be. Her actions truly are far more understandable when one takes into account all of the circumstances. Louwyn also brought up the point that Briony was very young and innocent when she made the accusation, as I did in my post. Louwyn also examined the entire situation in a way that I believe every student should. If you go into the second half of the book already hating Briony, then your mindset will stop you from seeing the good qualities that she does possess. Briony is clearly not a despicable person, and she’s not evil because her intentions are good. Louwyn brought up a good point that I hadn’t thought of, and this was the fact that Briony is very passionate about her writing, and that in itself is admirable. She seeks atonement through her writing, which is sad and leaves the reader feeling sympathetic towards her. If Briony truly was a terrible person, it’d be impossible to feel sympathy for her.