Story Telling: A Potent Tool In Ian McEwan's Atonement and Washington Irvin's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Although storytelling can be seen as a form of creative writing, the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan and the short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irvin both suggest that storytelling serves as a means for exaggerating actual events. This is significant because the partially deceitful elements tend to mold the reader’s judgment of what really happens.

In the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan, Thirteen year old Briony Tallis is gifted with the ability of words. Briony’s ability to tell stories often leaves the audience questioning whether Briony’s account of events actually took place or if they are a mere figment of her imagination. The first time that this is seen is when Briony discovers Robbie and her sister, Cecilia, in the library and she mistakes Robbie and Cecilia’s passionate encounter for an attack against Cecilia. The narrator states, “Though they were immobile, her immediate understanding was that she had interrupted an attack, a hand-to-hand fight. The scene was so entirely a realization of her worst fears that she sensed that her overanxious imagination had projected figures onto the packed spines of books. This illusion, or hope of one, was dispelled as her eyes adjusted to the gloom…Briony stared past Robbie’s shoulder into the terrified eyes of her sister. He had pushed his body against hers…He looked so huge and wild, and Cecilia with her bare shoulders and thin arms so frail…” (McEwan 116). Everything about this recital of events paints Robbie as a raging maniac. At this point the reader might question is this really an attack, because Briony continues to paint Robbie as a maniac. For a split second the reader begins to question whether this recital of events Briony witnesses was a willing act of ...

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...the narrator and Briony gives details from their point of view, however the details are set up to make you believe that things happened a certain way but it also allows you to draw conclusions of what you believe is happening. In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, Dietrich Knickerbocker sets up a narrative of events and leads you to believe that things happened to certain way, but in the end he leaves the narrative open and allows the reader to infer and draw their own conclusions. Both works effectively achieve the concept of molding the reader’s thought, then setting the scene for the reader to create their own conclusions.

Works Cited

McEwan, Ian. Atonement. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. Print.

Irving, Washington. Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Vol. X, Part 2. Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1917. Print.