Atonement - Authorial Methods

Question 1

narrative structure

Answer 1

4 parts, settings, time and focus shift
part 1 - summer 1935, Tallis country home
part 2 - Normandy (France), May 1940
part 3 - London april-may 1940
london 1999 - as said

Question 2

significance of narrative structure

Answer 2

parts are chronological but within them there is analepsis and prolepsis, creating fluidity and instability of time and place

Question 3

analepsis

Answer 3

a past event is recalled at a later point (e.g. Lola and Marhsall’s wedding)

Question 4

prolepsis

Answer 4

narrator references the future (‘within half an hour Briony would commit her crime’)

Question 5

narrative perspective

Answer 5

narrative perspective fluctuates:
part 1 - varies between multiple characters (Briony, Cecilia, Robbie, Mrs Tallis, Lola)
part 2 - Robbie and letters from Cecilia
part 3 - Briony, ‘signs off’ at the end
London, 1999 - sudden shift to first person

Question 6

what effect does the sudden shift to first person in “london 1999” have

Answer 6

shows/reveals that Briony is the author

foregrounds the concepts of narrator reliability and of fiction itself

Question 7

setting - Tallis house

Answer 7

represents apparently idyllic state of England, which in reality is crumbling and decaying
also represents rigid and social order

Question 8

setting - Normandy ww2

Answer 8

a chaotic, lawless place where death is everywhere
class divisions present in military rank but comradeship too - Nettle, Mace, Robbie ('real-life' class system generally discarded)

Question 9

epigraph

Answer 9

foregrounds importance of storytelling and imagination within the novel
taken from a Jane Austen novel - ‘Northanger Abbey’
- makes explicit connection to classic novels and the canon (influential work)

Question 10

genre variety

Answer 10

McEwan draws on conventions from range of genres: 
romance (Cecilia and Robbie - the doomed lovers)
crime and mystery (the attack on Lola, imprisonment of Robbie)
war story (parts 2 and 3)