Atonement

Question 1

“There were moments…she made her heart thud with luminous, yearning fantasies…”

Answer 1

Pg 4 chapter 1. Briony.

Question 2

“She was one of those children possessed by the desire to have the world just so.”

Answer 2

Pg 4 chapter 1. Briony.

Question 3

“Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel.”

Answer 3

Pg 5 chapter 1. Briony.

Question 4

“…beauty, she had discovered, occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, had infinite variation.”

Answer 4

Pg 7 chapter 1 Briony.

Question 5

“Marriage was the thing, or rather, a wedding was, with its formal neatness of virtue rewarded, the thrill of its pageantry and banqueting, and dizzy promise of a lifelong union.”

Answer 5

Pg 9 chapter 1. Briony.

Question 6

“A good wedding was an unacknowledged representation of the yet unthinkable - sexual bliss.”

Answer 6

Pg 9 chapter 1. Briony.

Question 7

“Briony felt the disadvantage of being two years younger than the other girl, of having a full two year’s refinement weight against her, and now her play seemed a miserable, embarrassing thing.”

Answer 7

Pg 13 chapter 1. Briony.

Question 8

“Self-pity needed her full attention..”

Answer 8

Pg 15 chapter 1. Briony.

Question 9

“As for Lola she spoke her lines correctly but casually, and sometimes smiled inappropriately at some private thought, determined to demonstrate that her nearly adult mind was elsewhere.”

Answer 9

Pg 16 chapter 1. Briony.

Question 10

“Now there was talk of medical college, which after a literature degree seemed rather pretentious. And presumptuous too, since it was her father who would have to pay.”

Answer 10

Pg 18 chapter 2. Cecelia.

Question 11

“There was something between them, and even she had to acknowledge that a tame remark about the weather sounded perverse.”

Answer 11

Pg 25 chapter 2. Cecelia,

Question 12

“Was he pretending to be jealous to conceal the fact that he was?”

Answer 12

Pg 26 chapter 2. Cecelia.

Question 13

“She thought how she should take more care of her appearance, like Lola. It was childish not to.”

Answer 13

Pg 35 chapter 3. Briony.

Question 14

“If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, which two billon voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life just as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance.”

Answer 14

Pg 36 chapter3. Briony.

Question 15

“By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader’s. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”

Answer 15

Pg 37 chapter 3. Briony.

Question 16

“She herself had written a tale in which a humble woodcutter saved a princess from drowning and ended by marrying her.”

Answer 16

Pg 38 chapter 3. Briony.

Question 17

“It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was the confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

Answer 17

Pg 40 chapter 3. Briony.

Question 17

“Briony had her first, weak intimation that for her now it could no longer be fairy-tale castles and princesses, but the strangeness of the here and now, of what passes between people, the ordinary people that she knew, and what power one could have over the other, and how easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong.”

Answer 17

Pg 39 chapter 3. Briony.

Question 18

Cecelia wondered…and whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her life - with gratitude, or profound and particular regret.

Answer 18

Pg 47 chapter 4. Cecelia upon meeting Paul Marshall.

Question 19

She had noticed him hanging around the children lately. Perhaps he was interested in Lola. He was sixteen, and certainly no boy.

Answer 19

Pg 48 chapter 4. Cecelia talking about Danny Hardman.

Question 20

All day long, she realised, she had been feeling strange, and seeing strangely, as though everything was already long in the past, made more vivid by posthumous ironies she could not quite grasp.

Answer 20

Pg 48 chapter 4. Cecelia. Foreshadowing.

Question 21

It…and again, she felt it: it had happened a long time ago, and all outcomes, on all scales - from the tiniest to the most colossal - were already in place. Whatever happened in the future, however superficially strange or shocking, would have an unsurprising, familiar quality, inviting her to say, but only to herself, Oh yes, of course. That. I should have known.

Answer 21

Pg 53 chapter 4. Cecelia.

Question 22

She thought a game was being played which she did not understand, but she was certain there had been an impropriety, or even an insult.

Answer 22

Pg 59 chapter 5. Lola.

Question 23

“Now he saw that the girl was almost a young woman…”

Answer 23

Pg 60 chapter 5. Paul Marshall.

Question 24

"...into a light sleep in which his young sisters had appeared...standing around his bedside, prattling and touching and pulling at his clothes." And "D'you know, you remind me of my favourite sister..."

Answer 24

Pg 60 and 61 chapter 5. Paul Marshall.

Question 25

"...a little squeal of laughter abruptly smothered."

Answer 25

Pg 69 chapter 6. Emily.

Question 26

She would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events, not her own fantasies, rose to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.

Answer 26

Pg 77 chapter 7. Briony.

Question 27

Danny Hardman was there too, leering at their sister when he should have been at work.

Answer 27

Pg 88 chapter 8. Robbie.

Question 28

It was an awkward age in a girl, he thought contentedly. Twelve, or was it thirteen?

Answer 28

Pg 94 chapter 8. Robbie.

Question 29

The very complexity of her feelings confirmed Briony in her view that she was entering an arena of adult emotion...

Answer 29

Pg 113 chapter 10. Briony.

Question 29

Above all, she had wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time.

Answer 29

Pg 97 chapter 9. Robbie.

Question 30

With the letter, something elemental, brutal, perhaps even criminal had been introduced, some principal of darkness, and even in her excitement over the possibilities, she did not doubt that her sister was in some way threatened and would need her help.

Answer 30

Pg 114 chapter 10. Briony.

Question 31

She could never forgive Robbie his disgusting mind.

Answer 31

Pg 115 chapter 10. Briony.

Question 32

I mean, I've been seeing strangely, as if for the first time. Everything has looked different - too sharp, too real. Even my own hands looked different. At other times I seem to be watching events as if they happened long ago. And all day I've been furious with you - and with myself.

Answer 32

Pg 133 chapter 11. Cecelia.

Question 33

They were beyond the present, outside time, with no memories and no future.

Answer 33

Pg 136 chapter 11.

Question 34

She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty in a face which a lifetime's habit has taught her to ignore.

Answer 34

Pg 137 chapter 11. Cecelia.

Question 35

Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can ever quite cheapen.

Answer 35

Pg 137 chapter 11. Robbie.

Question 36

He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.

Answer 36

Pg 137 chapter 11. Robbie.

Question 37

At this stage in her life Briony inhabited an ill-defined transitional space between the nursery and adult worlds which she crossed and recrossed unpredictably.

Answer 37

Pg 141 chapter 11. Robbie.

Question 38

Paul Marshall cleared his throat. "I saw it myself - had to say break it up and pull them off her. I have to say, I was surprised, little fellows like that. They went for her all right..."

Answer 38

Pg 141 chapter 11.

Question 39

He spoke behind Cecelia and Robbie's head to the young girl who stared as her eyes filled with tears. "There's no shame in making a fuss, you know. You're awfully brave, but you have taken a bad knock."

Answer 39

Pg 142 chapter 11. Paul Marshall.

Question 39

Robbie wanted to know why Marshall has not mentioned the matter before if Lola has been so badly harmed, but the table was now in commotion.

Answer 39

Pg 142 chapter 11.

Question 40

...if he could not have her to himself, then he too, like Briony, would go out searching alone. This decision, as he was to acknowledge many times, transformed his life.

Answer 40

Pg 144 chapter 11. RObbie.

Question 41

"But really, he was a hobby of Jack's, living proof of some levelling principle he had pursued through the years."

Answer 41

Pg 151. Chapter 12, Emily.

Question 41

But to be an object of adult hatred was an initiation into a solemn new world. It was promotion.

Answer 41

Pg 157, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 41

This was exactly what no one would have expected, and of course - villains were not announced with hisses or soliloquies, they did not come cloaked in black, with ugly expressions.

Answer 41

Pg 158, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 42

Everything connected. It was her own discovery. It was her story, the one that was writing itself around her.

Answer 42

Pg 166, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 43

"It was Robbie, wasn't it?" "Briony said it again, this time without the trace of a question. It was a statement of fact. It was Robbie."

Answer 43

Pg 166, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 44

Because I couldn't say for sure. I mean, I thought it might be him by his voice. What did he say? Nothing.

Answer 44

Pg 167, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 45

As far as she was concerned, everything fitted; the terrible present fulfilled the recent past.

Answer 45

Pg 168, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 46

The truth was in the symmetry, which was to say, it was founded in common sense.

Answer 46

Pg 169, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 47

She was like a bride-to-be who begins to feel her sickening qualms as the day approaches, and dares not speak her mind because so many preparations have been made on her behalf.

Answer 47

Pg 169, chapter 13. Briony. Could be foreshadowing to Lola's wedding with Paul.

Question 48

Less like seeing, more like knowing.

Answer 48

Pg 170, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 49

She trapped herself, she marched into a labyrinth of her own construction,....

Answer 49

Pg 170, chapter 13. Briony.

Question 50

Her doubts could be neutralised only by plunging in deeper.

Answer 50

Pg 170 pg 13. Briony.

Question 51

“It’s our secret.” “I won’t say a word.” “Wake me before seven. I promise, you won’t hear another word from me.”

Answer 51

pg 265 robbie

Question 52

“We catch this girl at the dawn of her selfhood.”

Answer 52

pg 312 briony

Question 53

“There was a crime. But there were also lovers.”

Answer 53

pg 380

Question 54

“The problem these fifty-nine years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?” “There is no one, no entity or higher form she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her.”

Answer 54

Pg 371 Briony

Question 55

“I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end.” “I gave them happiness but I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me.”

Answer 55

Pg 372, Briony