Briony Flashcards
Briony: Controlling
‘She was one of those children possessed by a desire to have the world just so.’ ch1,pg4
‘Briony’s was a shrine to her controlling demon.’ ch1,pg5
“a love of order also shaped the principles of justice”ch1pg7
Briony is deeply invested in creating order in her world, often through storytelling and imaginative play.This need for order extends to her understanding of right and wrong, where she sees situations in very black and white terms.And this phrase foreshadows the devastating consequences of her misjudgments. ‘order’ could also be an allusion to class influencing justice - the victims in this story are working class.
Briony: Immature/naive/childish
‘she took her daughter in her arms, onto her lap - ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite yet’ ch1,pg4
‘Briony felt the disadvantage of being two years younger than the other girl’ ch1,pg13
Briony: Isolated/neglected/abandoned
‘was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a break-fast and a lunch’ ch1,pg3
‘The temple was the orphan of and grand society lady, and now, with no one to care for it, no one to look up to, the child had grown old before its time, and let itself go’
Description of temple near the Tallis home, however also metaphor for Briony’s abandonment and neglect.
Briony: Melodramatic
‘unapologetically demanding her family’s total attention as she casts her narrative spell’ ch1,pg7
Foreshadowing, connotations with witchcraft/evil/the devil
‘self-pity needed her full attention’ ch1,pg 15
Briony: Obsessive
‘Briony was lost to her writing fantasies - what had seemed a passing fad was now an enveloping obsession.’ ch2,pg21
Briony: unrealistic expectations
‘with Briony expecting too much, and no one, especially the cousins, able to measure u to her frenetic vision’ ch2,pg21
Briony: Unreliable
‘The definition would refine itself over the years’. ch3,pg40 - narrative shift
‘The truth had become as ghostly as invention’ ch3, pg41
‘how easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong’ ch3,39 foreshadowing
Briony’s Destructive nature
“It is hard to slash at nettles for long without a story imposing itself, and Briony was soon absorbed… A tall nettle with a preening look… this was Lola… This was too satisfying to let go, and the next several nettles were Lola too…”(Ch7p73-4).
Briony venting her frustrations on the nettles created comedy. We also see a vengeful and possibly vindictive side to her nature. We again see her creative impulses through the fact that she personifies the nettles and imposes a“story”on her actions. Ominously we see Briony beginning to enjoy her act of destruction.
Briony’s stubborness
“… She decided she would stay there and wait until something significant happened to her… She would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events, not her own fantasies, rose to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance”(Ch7,p77).
Briony decides not to follow Leon and Marshall back to the house. Despite her weeks of excitement anticipating Leon’s return home, Briony is too stubborn and defiant to immediately follow or greet her brother.
McEwan’s narrative creates a dark irony here as Briony will find herself caught up in“real events”very soon at the very spot where she is currently waiting. Her“insignificance”will disappear when she plays the roles of witness and accuser. However,“her own fantasies”will skew her judgement and eventually lead to tragedy.
‘She disposed of her old self…
year by year in thirteen strokes’ (ch7,p74)
Sense of change, reinvention and atonement
When slashing at the bushes, Briony is metaphorically re-writing her storying, editing it and making changes.
Links to the narrative and Briony being the author.
‘Briony had lost her…
godly power of creation’ ch7p75
motif
“Briony inhabited an ill defined transitional space between …
nursery and adult worlds which she crossed and recrossed unpredictably”
Robbie sees the danger of Briony ch11p141
Briony opens and reflects on the letter
‘A savage and thoughtless curiosity prompted her to rip the letter from its envelope… it was essential, for her to know everything’ (ch10,p113)
instinctive and zoomorphic, foreshadows her later impulsivity.
‘with the letter, something elemental, brutal, perhaps even criminal had been introduced, some principle of darkness, and even in her excitement over the possibilities, she did not doubt that her sister was in some way threatened and would need her help.’ (ch10p114)
On reading the letter, Briony begins to assign roles: Robbie = the brutal criminal associated with darkness, Cecilia is the ‘threatened’ victim and she gives herself the role of ‘her sisters protector’ (123).
Briony tries assert control over the event she has witnessed (‘order must be imposed’ 115) by transforming them into fiction. Throughout this chapter we follow her as she develops her story and continues to assign roles.
‘The very complexity of her feeling confirmed Briony in her view that…
she was entering an arena of adult emotion and dissembling
Opening lines of chapter 10 (113)
Briony doesn’t completely understand the weight of the adult emotions she has read about-she maintains an observant role
reflection on her reading of the letter- Briony tries to inject herself into the adult world rather than enter adulthood naturally-shows she is not ready for it.
Theme of deception is introduced and Briony has just learned that pretence (“dissembling”) and deception are an integral part of the adult world. This creates irony, when Briony fails to realise the potential ‘dissembling’ behind Lola’s injuries (they may have been caused by Marshall).
Briony’s account of the sexual encounter between Cecilia and Robbie in the library
Chapter 10, page 123:
‘her immediate understanding was that she had interrupted an attack, a hand-to-hand fight.’
‘he had pushed his body… gripping her hair.. and had trapped her’
‘pushed’, ‘trapped’, ‘attack’, ‘gripping’, ‘huge’, ‘wild’, ‘protest’, ‘self-defence’, ‘struggling’, ‘terrified’
Semantic field of violence and attack. Briony interprets a clear villain and victim. McEwan creates a childish perspective where Briony confuses (or associates) sex and violence together.
“The building’s indistinct pallor shimmered in the dark…
it dissolved completely… It was changing its shape in a complicated way… she was witnessing some trick of darkness and perspective…”(ch13,p164).
The narrative (which we must remember has been written by Briony years later) emphasises how Briony can barely trust her senses in the darkness, with shapes dissolving and transforming themselves.
There is a strong focus on darkness throughout this chaper and these details help to magnify Briony’s“crime”as it seems impossible that she would be able to make out the figure of Robbie in such conditions.
“Within the half-hour…
Briony would commit her crime”(ch13p.156),
Opening line of chapter 13
simple, declerative statement, places responsibility on Briony.
The chapter begins with a shift forward in time with the tantalising opening, which immediately creates suspense, before going back in time to recount the details of Briony’s search and discovery.
The chronoligy of time is manipulated throughout the entire chapter. There is another shift forwards in time to “the weeks and months to come”(p.167) where Briony would stick to her version of the events she had witnessed.
‘Her childhood had ended… the fairy tail stories were behind her… in the sapce of a few hours she had witnessed mysteries, seen an unspeakable word, interrupted brutal behaviour… she had become a participant in the drama of life beyond the nursery.’ (ch13,p160)
Briony responds to events in this chapter as she imagines a writer of fiction must.
She is almost exhilarated by the thought tthat she has been given privileged access to a new and thrilling world ‘beyond the nursery’.
Briony’s assumption about Robbie
“She had no doubt. She could describe him… Everything connected. It was her own discovery. It was her story…”(ch13p164-6).
Briony convinces herself that Robbie is the assailant because this makes sense to her as a story:“The truth was in the symmetry… The truth instructed her eyes”(ch13p169).
Briony asks the question (“It was Robbie, wasn’t it?”), which quickly becomes an assertion, or as the narrative describes it, a“statement of fact… “It was Robbie””(p.166). Briony seems to be applying pressure on Lola to accuse Robbie who she has already decided is the right villain for this story.
When Lola admits to some uncertainty and that she couldn’t tell“for sure”, Briony responds with a blunt declaration which seems to almost verge on a threat:“Well I can. And I will”(p167).
Briony’s regret
‘She would never be able to console herself…’ (ch13,170)
Reflective Statement
‘She was like a bride-to-be who begins to feel her sickening qualms as the day approaches… she could not disappoint it at the altar’ (ch13,p170)
Simile shows Briony’s hesitation/doubts. She wants to change her mind be has already commited. Biblical/religious references link to sinning, reinforcing Briony’s crime.
“Yes. I saw him. I saw him.” (ch14,pg181)
Briony repeats her lie, perhaps suggestive of her trying to convince herself.
‘Her memories of the interrogation and signed statements and testimony, or of her awe outside the courtroom from which her youth excluded her, would not trouble her so much in the years to come as her…
fragmented recollection of that late night and summer dawn. How guilt refined the methods of self-torture, threading the beads of detail into an eternal loop, a rosary to be fingered for a lifetime.’
The opening of chapter 14 (173) starts with a time shift describing the future consequences for Briony.
Throughout the chapter, the older Briony questions the accuracy of her memories of that night, an ironic contrast with the certainty she displays when accusing Robbie of being the assailant.
McEwan uses an allegory to religion. The rosary is a string of beads used in both Catholicism and Islam to count prayers. Religions in general use shame and guilt to oppress human desire, invoke fear, and maintain order. By comparing Briony’s guilt to the beads on a rosary and a “loop” (a shape with no beginning or end), the author is able emphasize the eternity of Briony’s guilt.
Her fragmented recollection is showed through her questions throughou the chapter: ‘But how had her mother materialised so quickly from Lola’s bedside?’ (174) Where was Cecilia? (175)
Briony’s excitement in chapter 14
She believes getting the letter ‘could only earn her praise’ (177)
She refers to the drama as ‘a Christmas morning sensation’ (177), which juxtaposes the seriousness of the situation.
While the adults were reading the letter Briony ‘was experiencing the onset if a sweet and inward rapture’.
She feels“a flash of outrage”when Robbie returns with the twins:“it was wrong of him to turn up with the twins like that, and she felt cheated. Who would believe her now…”(p184).
Ironically everyone believes her.
‘yes, she was just a child. But…
not every child sends a man to prison with a lie’Part2 pg228
‘How to begin to understand this child’s mind?’
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.
Briony’s loss of identity
“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
“the students scrubbed their…
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.
Semantic field of war in the hospital
“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
Briony’s distraction
“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]
“She was under no obligation to the truth, she had promised no one a chronicle”(p280).
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”.
Briony’s distance from her family
‘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)
Briony’s reaction to revelation of Paul and Lola’s marriage
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]
“Her entries consisted of… simple accounts of her day which increasingly shaded off into fantasy.
“And, having changed the names, it became easier for her to transform the circumstances and invent.
“Here, being the name badge and uniform, was her true self, secretly hoarded, quietly accumulating. She had never lost that childhood pleasure… the journal preserved her dignity.”
Briony still writes while she is a nurse [pg 280]
Briony’s guilt
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
Briony’s maternal instinct
“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.
Briony’s need for redemption
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)
Food metaphors for injuries
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.
“From this new and intimate perspecitve, she had learned and simple, obvious thing she had always known… that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily meneded.” (304)
Metaphor - Briony’s realisation that she had torn apart Robbie’s life and now she cannot easily fix it.
Two figures by a fountain
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 ofHorizon Literary Journalexplaining 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 ofHorizonin 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)
Briony’s feelings at Lola and Paul’s wedding
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.
Briony’s shame
“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
“The sentence had already been served. The debt was paid. The verdict stood.” (325)
A sense of finality. It cannot be undone.
“She left the café, and as she walked along the Common, she felt the distance widen between her and another self, no less real, who was walking back towards the hospital”(p329).
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.
“This was an interview she was preparing for, the post of beloved younger sister” (329)
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.
“you’re an unreliable witness”(p336).
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.
“She hadn’t intended to mis-lead, she hadn’t acted out of malice”(p336).
Briony insists that she never considered herself to be a liar.
Briony’s”memory of passion”
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.
Climactic moment
The climactic moment of her visit to Cecilia’s is the admission, and revelation, that“it was Paul Marshall”(p346).
“She had thought about this conversation many times, like a child anticipating a beating.” (341)
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.
“She knew what was required of her. Not simply a letter, but a new draft, an atonement, and she was ready to begin.
BT
London 1999”(p349).
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.
