Ending Of Atonement

People are not inherently wrong for the decisions they make, and by understanding the story truth, we better understand the reasoning behind their actions. In the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan, the main character Briony accuses an older gentleman that has lived with their family for years of raping her 16 year old cousin. By seeing Briony’s perspective in the beginning we understand how she could have come to this conclusion, the signs she misinterpreted due to her own experiences. This is contrasted with others perspectives of the day, which leads up to make up on own minds about what happens, but also shows us why Brinoy was misguided. This doesn’t dismisses the fact that two people in love were separated due to circumstances outside of

The ending of the novel hurts the reader more than the beginning, as every human longs for a happy ending, to know things work out in the end. The reader is given this. Than the final chapter begins and it is ripped away from our hands as the full weight of the heartbreak and guilt inwrap us. There are two pains within the novel, the first being that two people in love were separated from each other and that they would never get to be together in the end, the second is the knowledge that this one mistake, that a child made, has followed this women her whole life. Even though she has written them a happy ending in her mind, she can never take back time and change what she did. It doesn’t really matter that she did change the story, what matters is why, and that question is answered in the title of the novel: atonement. The actual plot of the story matters less than the emotions of the characters, this book could have been set in a different time period, a different place, but that idea of atonement, longing, love and sin would still remain, and that is what makes the story, the actual truth is just the context, what makes the pieces make sense on our minds, but the shame and passion the characters feel is what really tells the