Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Atonement Spoilers
After my last post, I noticed I was getting a lot of hits from searches for Atonement spoilers. Being a major spoiler lover myself, I sympathize and realize that I probably didn't spoil the plot quite enough for you. And, so, to atone for my sins, here it is... the whole truth.
(which I am not going to spoiler tag, so if you don't actually want to know, consider this fair warning)
Part 1:
Briony Tallis is 13, I think, and writing a play called The Trials of Arabella, a morality tale, for a dinner party to be held at her family's English estate later that night. Her 9 year old twin cousins, Jackson and Pierrot, and their 15 year old sister Lola have come to stay with the family because their mother has run off to Paris with her lover. Briony engages them in the roles of the play, which the twins (written more like 4 year olds) are too distracted for and Lola thinks is stupid.
Cecelia, Briony's older sister home from college, and Robbie, the caretaker's son whose advanced college education is funded by the Tallises, have a growing though passive aggressive flirtation. While she chats with her brother Leon and his 25 year old chocolate magnate friend, Paul Marshall, Robbie finally writes her a short note to tell her how he feels, but in the first draft, out of aggravation, includes some very blunt sexual details about what exactly he'd like to do to her. After rewriting it in a sufficiently friendly tone, minus the details, he hands off his note for delivery to Cecelia via Briony...realizing seconds later that he sent the wrong version.
Briony, like any 13 year old girl, reads the letter before handing it off to Cecelia, her formerly sheltered adolescent mind set on fire by the use of a particular slang term. Being a drama queen, she forms an opinion that Robbie is some kind of crazed sexual addict and resolves to save Cecelia from him. Cecelia, meanwhile, reads the letter, the sheer shock of it being enough to make her realize she has been in love with Robbie for many years. Robbie, mortified, seeks her out in the library to apologize but in the moment also realizes their feelings are mutual. They begin to make love in the corner of the book stacks when Briony, fevered by her mission, walks in and, seeing them clothed and locked in what from her angle looks to be combat, believes Cecelia is fighting to get away from the crazed and aggressive Robbie. Cecelia then brushes out of the room past her, leaving Briony to expect her gratitude later.
Slightly before the dinner, Lola shows up in Briony's room with wrist burns and a scratch, claiming that the twins are taking out their frustration on her by beating her up, which again inspires Briony's dramatic nature as she sympathizes and takes on the role of protector. Briony then shares what she read in the letter and the two come to a conclusion that Robbie is a "monster."
Finally the dinner arrives, which, due to the summer heat, all the high-strung emotions come to a point. Robbie tries to start a conversation, and Briony hushes him as though he were attacking everyone. The twins start crying and have to be dismissed. Lola bursts out in tears with how they are treating her. At this point, they realize the twins have left a note saying they are running away and everyone runs out into the night to search the estate.
Briony eventually runs into Lola, sitting in the dark on the countryside as a male figure walking way from her. She is crying and reveals that she was raped, though she claims not to have seen who it was. Briony offers that it was Robbie and the two agree, heading back to the house to tell the family. The doctor is called, Lola is sedated, and Briony sets forth on her case to prove it was Robbie, despite the family's doubts. Having procured the letter from Cecelia's room, she shocks everyone into believing it and Robbie, who has just shown up with the sleeping boys in his arms, is hauled away to prison. The details of the night, revealed under oath, only serve to cement his conviction.
Part 2:
It is now during the war and Robbie, having served 3 years in prison with restrictions on "stimulation" such that he and Cecelia have to write in code to discuss their feelings (using such allusions as the typical Romeo and Juliet), is leading 2 fellow soldiers across France to the coast where they can be taken home. He is trusted and respected wherever they go, but there is still danger as the Germans are still dropping bombs. They can barely find enough to eat, thanks to the scorched earth and shell-shocked citizens. Along the way, they do their best to help townspeople reach safety and he gets severe shrapnel in his leg during one bombing episode, though he is too distracted by the carnage to really notice.
On the mental side of this journey, he tries to go through his mind what really happened and why Briony would falsely accuse him, citing her dramatic nature and that she may have had a crush on him which he had ignored. He reads and rereads Cecelia's letters, sent from the hospital where she is now a ward sister and has cut off all family relations, driving himself forward every day with the glowing respect of his comrades. He finally gets them to Bray Dunes on the English Channel, where they have been ferrying men back, and it is utter chaos. Reports of imminent bombings have stopped the transports, so he and his friends along with the hundreds of other men already there seek refuge in little places in the town with only scraps to share. As he falls into a delerious sleep, fever beginning to over take him, he is overtaken by his memories and love for Cecelia, shouting in his hysteria. His buddy wakes him up to tell him to settle down and hang on, because all officers are due to be transported back tomorrow. Robbie then falls into a peaceful sleep.
Part 3:
Briony has also become a nurse in a different hospital, cutting off her family to, in proper dramatic form, atone for her sins in the form of caring for sick soldiers and dumping bed pans. She's developed her writing to the point where she's writing novels, though they are rejected. She's also able to use her imagination to help others who are there dying. During one of her leave times, she stops into a chapel to watch Lola marry Paul Marshall, whom Briony has come to realize over the years was the true rapist (he had a scratch on his face at the dinner table that night). Lola convinced herself she was in love with him, convenient for that time period, and now the truth is protected by marriage, leaving only Briony to carry the truth.
Briony has written Cecelia and said she'd like to confess what really happened, so she seeks her out after the wedding, finding Cecelia in a boarding house with Robbie, clearly dazed by the war, sleeping in the bedroom. In one of the most uncomfortable conversations ever, Briony admits her part and, after Robbie joins them, reveals what she knows. Though it will lawfully make little difference, she says she will write the family and sign an affidavit in the effort to clear his name. She leaves them, all of them relieved but broken.
Part 4
Briony is now an old woman, a novelist, and on her way to her 80th birthday party where her great nephews and nieces will perform Trials of Arabella. There is still some tension and sadness between her, Leon, and the remaining living cousin. Afterwards she goes to the post office to pick up comments on her latest novel, a war novel which the publisher in his review implies that she is imposing her view on how it should be rather than how it is, though he will publish it. She corrects a few technical terms and sends it off, heading out to the car and seeing Lola and Paul leaving a museum benefit, Paul being quite elderly and bent but still charismatic, and Lola tall and beautiful with nearly no signs of aging. Briony, it seems, has become Lola's picture of Dorian Gray, as it were.
At home she grows sleepy and begins to reminisce about the past, her sins, her writing...and reveals that she still cannot bear to face what truly happened, that she never found the courage to face Cecelia after all, that Robbie had died that night at Bray Dunes of septicemia from his wound, that Cecelia was killed in an air raid soon afterwards, and that their letters, placed in the War Museum, were the only parts of them that had reunited. She then drifts to sleep (read: dies), believing that her version's happy ending was the best she could do for them, so many years later.
NOTE: As I mentioned in my original review, despite its soap opera plot, Atonement is quite dense and literary. We all impose our own reality on our lives in a way, despite there being other people with their own stories in it, and Atonement explores the potential damage that action has and its cost to our souls. Each character is guilty of it, to lesser or greater degrees, and each character pays for it, though not always in equitable ways. Despite that universal truth which is explored such that we can only sympathize or empathize with every character, and despite having seen first-hand similar instances in the school system, I still did not sympathize in any way with Briony, whose point of view commands the majority of the book. Others vehemently disagreed, and that's why this is a good book club book.
(which I am not going to spoiler tag, so if you don't actually want to know, consider this fair warning)
Part 1:
Briony Tallis is 13, I think, and writing a play called The Trials of Arabella, a morality tale, for a dinner party to be held at her family's English estate later that night. Her 9 year old twin cousins, Jackson and Pierrot, and their 15 year old sister Lola have come to stay with the family because their mother has run off to Paris with her lover. Briony engages them in the roles of the play, which the twins (written more like 4 year olds) are too distracted for and Lola thinks is stupid.
Cecelia, Briony's older sister home from college, and Robbie, the caretaker's son whose advanced college education is funded by the Tallises, have a growing though passive aggressive flirtation. While she chats with her brother Leon and his 25 year old chocolate magnate friend, Paul Marshall, Robbie finally writes her a short note to tell her how he feels, but in the first draft, out of aggravation, includes some very blunt sexual details about what exactly he'd like to do to her. After rewriting it in a sufficiently friendly tone, minus the details, he hands off his note for delivery to Cecelia via Briony...realizing seconds later that he sent the wrong version.
Briony, like any 13 year old girl, reads the letter before handing it off to Cecelia, her formerly sheltered adolescent mind set on fire by the use of a particular slang term. Being a drama queen, she forms an opinion that Robbie is some kind of crazed sexual addict and resolves to save Cecelia from him. Cecelia, meanwhile, reads the letter, the sheer shock of it being enough to make her realize she has been in love with Robbie for many years. Robbie, mortified, seeks her out in the library to apologize but in the moment also realizes their feelings are mutual. They begin to make love in the corner of the book stacks when Briony, fevered by her mission, walks in and, seeing them clothed and locked in what from her angle looks to be combat, believes Cecelia is fighting to get away from the crazed and aggressive Robbie. Cecelia then brushes out of the room past her, leaving Briony to expect her gratitude later.
Slightly before the dinner, Lola shows up in Briony's room with wrist burns and a scratch, claiming that the twins are taking out their frustration on her by beating her up, which again inspires Briony's dramatic nature as she sympathizes and takes on the role of protector. Briony then shares what she read in the letter and the two come to a conclusion that Robbie is a "monster."
Finally the dinner arrives, which, due to the summer heat, all the high-strung emotions come to a point. Robbie tries to start a conversation, and Briony hushes him as though he were attacking everyone. The twins start crying and have to be dismissed. Lola bursts out in tears with how they are treating her. At this point, they realize the twins have left a note saying they are running away and everyone runs out into the night to search the estate.
Briony eventually runs into Lola, sitting in the dark on the countryside as a male figure walking way from her. She is crying and reveals that she was raped, though she claims not to have seen who it was. Briony offers that it was Robbie and the two agree, heading back to the house to tell the family. The doctor is called, Lola is sedated, and Briony sets forth on her case to prove it was Robbie, despite the family's doubts. Having procured the letter from Cecelia's room, she shocks everyone into believing it and Robbie, who has just shown up with the sleeping boys in his arms, is hauled away to prison. The details of the night, revealed under oath, only serve to cement his conviction.
Part 2:
It is now during the war and Robbie, having served 3 years in prison with restrictions on "stimulation" such that he and Cecelia have to write in code to discuss their feelings (using such allusions as the typical Romeo and Juliet), is leading 2 fellow soldiers across France to the coast where they can be taken home. He is trusted and respected wherever they go, but there is still danger as the Germans are still dropping bombs. They can barely find enough to eat, thanks to the scorched earth and shell-shocked citizens. Along the way, they do their best to help townspeople reach safety and he gets severe shrapnel in his leg during one bombing episode, though he is too distracted by the carnage to really notice.
On the mental side of this journey, he tries to go through his mind what really happened and why Briony would falsely accuse him, citing her dramatic nature and that she may have had a crush on him which he had ignored. He reads and rereads Cecelia's letters, sent from the hospital where she is now a ward sister and has cut off all family relations, driving himself forward every day with the glowing respect of his comrades. He finally gets them to Bray Dunes on the English Channel, where they have been ferrying men back, and it is utter chaos. Reports of imminent bombings have stopped the transports, so he and his friends along with the hundreds of other men already there seek refuge in little places in the town with only scraps to share. As he falls into a delerious sleep, fever beginning to over take him, he is overtaken by his memories and love for Cecelia, shouting in his hysteria. His buddy wakes him up to tell him to settle down and hang on, because all officers are due to be transported back tomorrow. Robbie then falls into a peaceful sleep.
Part 3:
Briony has also become a nurse in a different hospital, cutting off her family to, in proper dramatic form, atone for her sins in the form of caring for sick soldiers and dumping bed pans. She's developed her writing to the point where she's writing novels, though they are rejected. She's also able to use her imagination to help others who are there dying. During one of her leave times, she stops into a chapel to watch Lola marry Paul Marshall, whom Briony has come to realize over the years was the true rapist (he had a scratch on his face at the dinner table that night). Lola convinced herself she was in love with him, convenient for that time period, and now the truth is protected by marriage, leaving only Briony to carry the truth.
Briony has written Cecelia and said she'd like to confess what really happened, so she seeks her out after the wedding, finding Cecelia in a boarding house with Robbie, clearly dazed by the war, sleeping in the bedroom. In one of the most uncomfortable conversations ever, Briony admits her part and, after Robbie joins them, reveals what she knows. Though it will lawfully make little difference, she says she will write the family and sign an affidavit in the effort to clear his name. She leaves them, all of them relieved but broken.
Part 4
Briony is now an old woman, a novelist, and on her way to her 80th birthday party where her great nephews and nieces will perform Trials of Arabella. There is still some tension and sadness between her, Leon, and the remaining living cousin. Afterwards she goes to the post office to pick up comments on her latest novel, a war novel which the publisher in his review implies that she is imposing her view on how it should be rather than how it is, though he will publish it. She corrects a few technical terms and sends it off, heading out to the car and seeing Lola and Paul leaving a museum benefit, Paul being quite elderly and bent but still charismatic, and Lola tall and beautiful with nearly no signs of aging. Briony, it seems, has become Lola's picture of Dorian Gray, as it were.
At home she grows sleepy and begins to reminisce about the past, her sins, her writing...and reveals that she still cannot bear to face what truly happened, that she never found the courage to face Cecelia after all, that Robbie had died that night at Bray Dunes of septicemia from his wound, that Cecelia was killed in an air raid soon afterwards, and that their letters, placed in the War Museum, were the only parts of them that had reunited. She then drifts to sleep (read: dies), believing that her version's happy ending was the best she could do for them, so many years later.
NOTE: As I mentioned in my original review, despite its soap opera plot, Atonement is quite dense and literary. We all impose our own reality on our lives in a way, despite there being other people with their own stories in it, and Atonement explores the potential damage that action has and its cost to our souls. Each character is guilty of it, to lesser or greater degrees, and each character pays for it, though not always in equitable ways. Despite that universal truth which is explored such that we can only sympathize or empathize with every character, and despite having seen first-hand similar instances in the school system, I still did not sympathize in any way with Briony, whose point of view commands the majority of the book. Others vehemently disagreed, and that's why this is a good book club book.
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