Atonement

We spent last week watching some clips from the film "Atonement" which is an adaptation from the book of the same name by Ian McEwan. The film is about the love between Cecilia and Robbie and Briony telling us the story from her own perspective. Briony creates her own vision of the actions and these visions are not always the correct ones.

While watching the film, we were expected to answer some questions:

1. What sort of social and cultural setting does the Tallis House create? What emotions and impulses are being acted upon or repressed by its inhabitants?

The Tallis's house seems to be an old, mysterious place owned by a high-class family. These features of the house are backed up by the mysterious people arriving (the owner of the chocolate factory) and its inhabitants (Briony for example) who isn't presented as a normal kid ( she writes plays while the other children just want to play).

2. A passion for order, a lively imagination, and a desire for attention seem to be Briony's strongest traits. In what ways is she still a child? Is her narcissism - her inability to see things from any point of view but her own - unusual in a thirteen-year-old?

Briony doesn't understand what is really happening and misunderstands almost everything she sees. She acts by impulses and just with her own vision of the actions. It is unusual for a 13-year-old to act like that and don't ask first, but this might be due to her lack of experience in the world.

3. Why does Briony stick to her "version of the story" with such unwavering commitment? Does she act entirely in error in a situation she is not old enough to understand, or does she act, in part, on an impulse of malice, revenge, or self-importance?

AT first, it seems that Briony acted in an impulse and in a childish way, but as the story goes on, we get to know that Briony was in love with Robbie and that's why she did that. That's the real reason why she stack to her vision of the story. Briony acts in error without measuring the consequences. 

4. As she grows older, Briony develops the empathy to realise what she has done to Cecilia and Robbie. How and why do you think she does this?

As Briony grows older, she understand the real repercussions of her acts and tries to repair them by writing the book. She feels sorry and guilty of her acts and of what she has done.

In the film "Atonement", we get to know that Robbie died in the evacuation from Dunkirk during WWII. This evacuation shapes the destiny of the characters, as I said before, Robbie died during the evacuation (He was in the army) and later on, Cecilia dies in London.

Here's a video of the Dunkirk Evacuation:

 

Then we read an extract from the book, in which we get to know that there are people, probably in the middle of a battle field, waiting to be evacuated and go back home. During this episode, anxiousness takes an important role as well as fear and uncertainty of what was happening. Briony is the narrator who tells us about Robbie, who is the one in that place. We later get to know that the setting is the evacuation from Dunkirk during WWII.
In my opinion, McEwan's vision of the war is the one represented, although, he tells us his vision through Briony and Robbie's acts.

ASSIGNMENT
Find examples (at least two) of men writing as women, and women writing as men.

In first place I have J.K. Rowling, author of the famous series of Harry Potter. She is an English writer who, in the Harry Potter series, writes as a man.

Another example is Sophocles, one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. In his book "Antigone", the main character is a woman.

With this examples, I can say that the benefits of writing as if you were from the opposite sex, is that you write from another perspective than the usual one. For example, if you are a man and write as a woman, you'll probably write about woman issues but from your own perspective (man). By doing this, women that have this issue will understand it from another perspective and think of it in another way. On the other hand, the limitations of doing this is that you don't know what and how it really happens.