Crime in Atonement

Question 1

The certainty of Briony’s crime (1)

Answer 1

‘Within the half hour Briony would commit her crime’ p156

Question 2

Briony is only a child (3)

Answer 2

‘Cecilia had always loved to cuddle the baby of the family’ p44

‘poor darling Briony, the softest little thing’ p 65

‘We catch the young girl at the dawn of her selfhood’ p312

Question 3

Briony genuinely believes what she is saying (7)

Answer 3

‘What strange power did he have over her. Blackmail? Threats?’ p38

‘seal the crime, frame it with the victim’s curse, close his fate with the magic of naming’

‘She did not doubt that her sister was in some way threatened’ p 114

‘Something irreducibly human, or male, threatened the order of their household’ p114

‘She had interrupted an attack, a hand-to hand fight… he looked so huge and wild’ p123

‘She had no doubt. She could describe him. There was nothing she could not describe.’ P 165

‘When she said… I saw him, she meant it, and was perfectly honest’ p 169

Question 4

Briony is forced into the lie (1)

Answer 4

‘they knew their own minds, they knew what they wanted and how to proceed. She was asked again and again, and as she repeated herself, the burden of consistency was pressed upon her.’ P 169

Question 5

Robbie’s false imprisonment (1)

Answer 5

‘Robbie between them. And handcuffed! She saw how his arms were forced in front of him… The disgrace of it horrified her. It was further confirmation of his guilt, and the beginning of his punishment. It had the look of eternal damnation’ p184

Question 6

Grace Turner’s Reaction (3)

Answer 6

‘She raised the umbrella and shouted… Mrs Turner shook her arm free, raised the umbrella again, this time with two hands, and brought it down, goose head first, with a crack like a pistol shot.’ P186

‘As the constables half pushed, half carried her to the edge of the drive, she began to shout a single word so loudly that Briony could hear it from her bedroom.’ P 186

‘Liars! Liars! Liars! Mrs. Turner roared’ p187

Question 7

Cecilia suffers (1)

Answer 7

‘Her older daughter shrank into private misery’ p175

Question 8

Briony talks about the severity of her crime (3)

Answer 8

‘She would never be able to console herself that she was pressured or bullied. She never was.’ P170

‘She trapped herself, she marched into the labrynth of her own construction, and was too young, too awestruck, too keen to please, to insist on making her own way back’ p170

‘Lola’s silence in the darkness at the lakeside as she let her earnest, ridiculous, oh so prim younger cousin, who couldn’t tell real life from the stories in her head deliver the attacker into safety’ p 324

Question 9

Lola’s omissions (2)

Answer 9

‘Lola.. was able to retreat behind an air of wounded confusion, and as a treasured patient, recovering victim, lost child, let herself be bathed in the concern and guilt of the adults in her life’ p168

‘She had little more to do than remain silent behind her cousin’s zeal. Lola did not need to lie, to look her supposed attacked in the eye and summon the courage to accuse her, because all that work was done for her, innocently… Lola was required only to remain silent about the truth, banish it, and forget about it entirely..’ p168

Question 10

Lola benefits from Briony’s lie (2)

Answer 10

When Briony is assertive and says ‘It was a statement of a fact. It was Robbie’, then ‘it was clear that something was changing in Lola, a warmth rising from her skin’ p166

Question 11

Crime against the reader (3)

Answer 11

BT
London 1999 pg. 349

‘I merged them in my description to concentrate all my experiences into one place. A convenient distortion, and the least of my offences against veracity.’ pg. 356

‘I cannot think what purpose would be served if, say, I tried to convince my reader… that Robbie Turner died of septicaemia at Bray Dunes on 1 June 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in the September of the same year by the bomb that destroyed Balham Underground station’ p370

Question 12

Hints about the crime against the reader (6)

Answer 12

Page 40 and 41 – she contemplates fiction.

‘She could write the scene three times over, from three points of view’ p40

‘Having changed the names, it became easier to transform the circumstances and invent’ p280

‘In the later years she regretted not being more factual, not providing herself with a store of raw material. It would have been useful to know what happened, what it looked like, who was there, what was said’ p280.

‘She was under no obligation to the truth’ p280

‘Did she think she could… drown her guilt in a stream – three streams – of consciousness?’ p320

Question 13

Impact of the rape on Lola (4)

Answer 13

‘Lola’s face was so white and rigid, like a clay mask’ p 154

‘Lola was sitting forward, with her arms crossed around her chest, hugging herself and rocking slightly. The voice was faint and distorted, as though impeded by something like a bubble’ p165

‘The body was bony and unyielding… Lola hugged herself and rocked’ p 165

‘Weak submissive voice’ p165

Question 14

The rape is later presented as less significant (2)

Answer 14

‘But the scratches and bruises were long healed, and all her own statements at the time were to the contrary.’

‘Nor did the bride appear to be a victim… More than that, surely; a chocolate magnate, the creator of Amo.’ P325

Question 15

Description of the rape in the wedding scene (1)

Answer 15

‘She felt the memories, the needling details, like dirt on her skin: Lola coming to her room in tears, her chafed and bruised writs, and the scratches on Lola’s shoulder and down Marshall’s face; Lola’s silence in the darkness at the lakeside as she let her earnest, ridiculous, oh so prim younger cousin… deliver the attacker into safety’ p 324

Question 16

Lola presented as an adult (4)

Answer 16

‘The girl was almost a young woman, poised and imperious, quite the little Pre-Raphaelite princess with her bangles and tresses, her painted nails and velvet choker’ p60

‘The older girl’

‘But the scratches and bruises were long healed, and all her own statements at the time were to the contrary.’

‘Nor did the bride appear to be a victim… More than that, surely; a chocolate magnate, the creator of Amo.’ P325

Question 17

Lola presented as a child (3)

Answer 17

‘Poor vain and vulnerable Lola with the pearl-studded choker and the rose-water scent, who longed to throw off the last restraints of childhood…’ p324

‘Lola – barely more than a child, prised open and taken – to marry her rapist’ p324

‘Her hair was gathered into a single childish plait’ p324

Question 18

The Leg (5)

Answer 18

‘There were horrors enough, but it was the unexpected detail that threw him and afterwards would not let him go.’ P191

‘He saw it… It was a leg in a tree. A mature plane tree, only just in leaf. The leg was twenty feet up, wedged in the first forking of the trunk, bare, severed cleanly above the knee. From where they stood there was no sign of blood or torn flesh.’ P192

‘It was a perfect leg, pale, smooth, small enough to be a child’s. The way it was angled in the fork, it seemed to be on display, for their benefit or enlightenment: this is a leg.’ P192

‘All he wanted now… was to forget about the leg’ p193

‘He thought about telling them of his own single, horrifying detail. But he didn’t want to add to the horror, and nor did he want to give life to the image while it remained at a distance’ p199

Question 19

The impact of war on Robbie (3)

Answer 19

‘He felt hostile to everyone around him. His feelings had shrunk to the small hard point of his own survival’ p217

‘Turner grabbed the man by his tie and was ready to smack his stupid face with an open right hand’ p217

‘In the lucid freedom of his dream state, Turner intended to shoot the officer through the chest. It would be better for everybody’ p247

Question 20

Comparison of the war and the rape (1)

Answer 20

‘Perhaps London would be overwhelmed by poisonous gas, or over-run by German parachutists aided on the ground by fifth columnists before Lola’s wedding could take place’ p288

Question 21

Impact of war on Briony’s crime (1)

Answer 21

‘Her secret torment and the public upheaval of war had always seemed separate worlds, but now she understood how the war might compound her crime.’ P288

Question 22

Prison is presented as worse than war (4)

Answer 22

‘Being here, sheltering in a barn, with an army in rout, where a child’s limb in a tree was something that ordinary men could ignore, where a whole country, a whole civilisation was about to fall, was better than being there, on a narrow bed under dim electric light, waiting for nothing’ p202.

‘He could smell the concrete floor, and the piss in the bucket, and the gloss paint on the walls, and hear the snores of the men along the row’ p202

‘The stupidity and claustrophobia. The hand squeezing on his throat.’ P202

‘Ahead of them the sky was beginning to clear a little and glowed like a promise… As they approached the top through a copse of chestnut trees, the lowering sun… How fine it might have been, to end a day’s ramble in the French countryside, walking into the setting sun. Always a hopeful act’ p194

Question 23

Misc (3)

Answer 23

‘There was a crime. But there were also lovers.’ P370

‘Within the half hour Briony would commit her crime’ p156

‘There was our crime – Lola’s, Marshall’s, mine.’ P369