Briony Flashcards

Question

'yes, she was just a child. But...

Answer 1

not every child sends a man to prison with a lie'Part2 pg228

Answer 2

Part 2, pg229 Rhetorical question. Robbie reflects on Briony's motives and this quotation highlights the complexity of the crime. The question amplifies and key theme in the novel, which Briony kept coming back to in part 1 - how can we ever truly 'know' or 'understand' another person.

Answer 3

"in no circumstances should a nurse communicate to a patient her Christian name" (272) Briony, like Robbie, has lost her first name. She is known by Tallis - she has also lost part of her identity, however this is deliberate on her part, as a sort of 'penance'. In the narrative, she is still referred to as Briony, not Tallis, suggesting this fact and emphasising that her loss is nothing compared to Robbie's. "This narrowin, which was above all a stripping away of identity..." (275) "The uniform, like all uniforms eroded identity... she had no identity beyond her badge... and was delivered from introspection" (276) - Seeking distraction

Answer 4

cracked and bleeding chilblained hands under freezing water" Briony, here, is constantly washing her hands in the 'war on germs', this also suggests an attempt to cleanse herself of the crime she has committed.

Answer 5

"The war against germs never ceased", "batallion", "a whole division", "badge" "professional pride", "sacrificed" (272) Briony's war in part 3 vs Robbie's war in part 2

Answer 6

"Physical discomfort helped close down Briony's mental horizons." Briony using suffering as a form of distraction [pg 275] "She was abandoning herself to a life of strictures, rules, obedience.... she had no identity beyond her badge" Briony's sacrifice from becoming a nurse [pg 276]

Answer 7

Mention of “the truth” when talking about her journal immediately creates some irony when we recall Briony’s accusation against Robbie in Part One. However, there is also a deeper layer of irony present as we will later learn that an older Briony has, particularly in Part Three of the novel, rewritten the “truth”.

Answer 8

'it seemed theatrical to Briony, and ridiculous, grown young women tearful for their mothers...' (277) "Briony sometimes wrote her own **concise** letters home which conveyed little more than that she was not ill, not unhappy, not in need of her allowance and not about to change her mind in the way that her mother had predicted." (277) "Part of the purpose of becoming a nurse was to work for her independence. It was important to her that her parents, especially her mother, knew as little about her life as possible" (278)

Answer 9

Briony was more than implicated in this union. She had made it possible... Briony felt her familiar guilt pursue her... she would never undo the damage. She was unforgivable. Briony's role in marriage between Paul and Lola, suggests she knows Paul is guilty [pg 285]

Answer 10

Briony still writes while she is a nurse [pg 280]

Answer 11

If something happened to Robbie, if Cecilia and Robbie were never to be together... Her **secret torment** and the upheaval of war had always seemed seperate worlds, but now she understood how **the war might compound her crime.** The only conceivable solution would be for the past never to have happened." (288) "If he didn't come back... she longed to have someone else's past." (288) Briony thinking about Robbie and Cecilia being separated, realising how war would affected crime fairytale - sense of forboding. The elipse shows how Briony's thoughts keeps wandering back to her crime. [pg 288] “To Briony, it appeared that her life was going to be lived in one room, without a door” (p288). The nightmarish image of a room without a door suggests Briony’s dread of being unable to escape from her past

Answer 12

“she cradled their filthy heads against her apron, like giant babies”. The image establishes a connection between herself and Cecilia, who worked on a maternity ward.

Answer 13

Briony’s need for redemption is seen in her imagining one of her patients as Robbie: "She thought too how one of these men might be Robbie, how she would dress his wounds without knowing who he was, and with cotton-wool tenderly rub his face until his familiar features emerged, and how he would turn to her with gratitude, realise who she was, and take her hand, and in silently squeezing it, forgive her." (298)

Answer 14

At first, the imagery used to describe injuries is unusual e.g. the blackened leg described as “black and soft like an overripe banana”(296) and wounds looking “like miniature bunches of red grapes” as if Briony’s limited experience of real nursing leaves her unable to find more appropriate metaphors, the imagery being taken from her childhood memories instead.

Answer 15

Metaphor - Briony's realisation that she had torn apart Robbie's life and now she cannot easily fix it.

Answer 16

Briony's feedback on her novella 'Two figures by a fountain', written as a teen, is an example of meta-fiction, blurring the lines between reality and now. McEwan provides us with the whole text of a letter from “C.C.”, the editor of Horizon Literary Journal explaining his decision not to publish this story but also offering encouragement and advice on how Briony can improve it by providing a more developed “narrative”, advice Briony clearly takes on board. In another blurring of fiction and reality, this “C.C” is a real person, Cyril Connolly, who was indeed editor of Horizon in 1940. The letter, however, is an invention. Irony in the advice: "If this girl has so fully misunderstood or been so wholly baffled by the strange little scene that has unfolded before her, how might it affect the lives of the two adults? Might she come between them is some disastrous fasshion?" (313)

Answer 17

At the sight of Lola and Marshall, Briony relives the events of the night Lola was sexually assaulted almost 5 years previously. **“She felt the memories, the needling details, like a rash, like dirt on her skin…” (p324).** The “needling details” suggest Briony’s discomfort at the memory of her “crime” but the imagery of a “rash” and of “dirt” recalls Marshall’s attacks on Lola in Part One and acts as a metaphor for Briony's guilt. The sensory imagery used to describe these feelings as “like a rash” conveys how uncomfortable she is, as if the guilt is an illness.

Answer 18

"The interminable pages about light and stone and water... - none of this could **conceal** her **cowardice**. Did she really think she could **hide** behind some borrowed notions of modern writing, and drown her **guilt** in a sream - three streams! - of consciousness? The **evasions** of her little novel were exactly those of her life." "It was not the backbone of a story that she lacked. It was **backbone**." pg320

Answer 19

A sense of finality. It cannot be undone.

Answer 20

Dual narrative Briony feels a curious sense of detachment from herself but there is a deeper significance to the image employed here of her having two selves. We later learn that Briony, in fact, has second thoughts about visiting her sister and decides to head back to the hospital. The account which we are about to read of Briony’s visit to her sister’s house did not happen. The ’real’ Briony walks back to the hospital; only the fictional Briony carries on to visit Cecilia.

Answer 21

Briony is curiously detached from herself, describing herself as “an imagined or ghostly persona”. This becomes more understandable when we realise that Briony’s visit to Cecilia did not happen and is instead purely “imagined” by an older Briony.

Answer 22

Cecilia's words to Briony. Readers will wonder if she is also an unreliable narrator who cannot be trusted to give an accurate account of events.

Answer 23

Briony insists that she never considered herself to be a liar.

Answer 24

Upon Robbie's appearance, Briony remembers a “memory of a passion she’d had for him, a real crush that had lasted days” (p342), recalling Robbie’s “theory” about the reason for her false allegation against him. Briony makes light of this infatuation but yet another mention of it suggests that it may have played a part in prejudicing Briony against Robbie.

Answer 25

The climactic moment of her visit to Cecilia’s is the admission, and revelation, that “it was Paul Marshall” (p346).

Answer 26

Simile serves as a reminder that Briony was still a child, however it may also suggests that she still has a childish mindset and cannot fully comprehend the consequences of her crime, even now.

Answer 27

The closing words of Part Three, and in particular the date and initials, reveal that what we have just finished reading has been written by Briony as a “new draft” of her story and that this is her “act of atonement" for the wrongs she has done. The realisation that Part Three has been written by an older Briony immediately makes us question what we have just read.

Briony Flashcards

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