Bryony Tallis is the younger sister whose literary skills are often belittled by her older sister Celia. As the book opens, she creates a play for her cousins and herself to perform. The family’s dynamics are at once set as the reader finds the mother remote and as distant as the father, who seems to spend most of his nights in London, rather then at home.

As the evening’s events unwind, the small details and insignificant happenings of the day are spoken about, but the undercurrent of tension is building. Later, one of the cousins is assaulted on the grounds of the house and Briony, still stinging from an insult earlier, tells the authorities that it was Robbie, their childhood friend and Cecilia’s boyfriend.

Briony witnesses her sister strip down to her undergarments and dive into a family fountain with Robbie looking on. Not comprehending what was going on between the two, she go

Moreover, as the second section unwinds, maturity inevitably comes, but not completely. Briony seeks to make amends for her lies, though she vows never to confess to anyone that it was a lie. Instead, she believes that if she “does well”, that it will “atone” for the catastrophe which immediately followed her lie.

The usual themes of truth and honor are touched upon in this novel, but each new theme ushers in personal growth of the characters, especially Briony. Some of the themes include imagination and of the effects that time has on an event. The reader learns early on that for whatever reason, possibly the dysfunctional family,Briony seems only to understand her world through the pages of her stories, Though she sets aside her writing for a time, it becomes in veritable that she will one day return to it. When she does, she has to come to understand the changes of perspective throughout her lifetime and that atonement is something that encompasses a different meaning for different people.

The major characters that one encounters and who change throughout the course of the novel are Cecelia, Robbie and Briony. Briony, of course is the main character, with Robbie running a close second. In fact, these two protagonists serve to move the story forward as their unresolved problems with each other and with the events that were set into motion that night circle around them.

Though she does not understand what has happened, her imagination fills in what she supposes to be the gaps. It is this assumption that leads to the terrible culmination of events which destroys them all. Briony decides she has witnessed a scene that is sinister; that Robbie has somehow forced her sister to disrobe.

Some topics in this essay:
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