Justice and Punishment in Atonement Flashcards
Briony is punished by her own guilt (6)
‘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’ p173
‘She would never be able to console herself that she was pressured or bullied. She never was.’ P170
‘She trapped herself, she marched into the labrynth of her own construction, and was too young, too awestruck, too keen to please, to insist on making her own way back’ p170
‘She would never undo the damage. She was unforgivable.’ P285
‘Did she think she could… drown her guilt in a stream – three streams – of consciousness?’ p320
‘Secret torment’
Briony is punished by her own guilt (6)
‘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’ p173
‘She would never be able to console herself that she was pressured or bullied. She never was.’ P170
‘She trapped herself, she marched into the labrynth of her own construction, and was too young, too awestruck, too keen to please, to insist on making her own way back’ p170
‘She would never undo the damage. She was unforgivable.’ P285
‘Did she think she could… drown her guilt in a stream – three streams – of consciousness?’ p320
‘Secret torment’
Briony’s self-punishment is shown by her confrontation with Robbie and Cecilia (2)
‘I’m torn between breaking your stupid neck here and… throwing you down the stairs.’ Robbie p341
‘She had thought about this conversation many times, like a child anticipating a beating. Now it was happening at last… She knew his words would hurt her later’ p341
Briony punishes herself with her book. She presents herself poorly to make us hate her, and her deception makes us feel betrayed, purposefully, as we dislike her even more (4)
‘The truth had become as ghostly as invention’ p41
BT
London 1999 pg. 349
‘I merged them in my description to concentrate all my experiences into one place. A convenient distortion, and the least of my offences against veracity.’ pg. 356
‘There was our crime – Lola’s, Marshall’s, mine.’ P369
Briony is punished with dementia (5)
‘I thought of those sad inmates of Bedlam who were once a source of general entertainment, and I reflected in a self-pitying way on how I was soon to join their ranks’ p354
‘My brain, my mind, is closing down.’ P354
‘Perhaps I am nothing more than a victim of modern diagnostics’ p355
‘on hands and knees, and crawl our way towards the truth’
‘I experienced for the first time something like desperation…. Claustrophobia was part of it, helpless confinement within a process of decay, and a sensation of shrinking.’ p362
Briony punishes herself as a nurse (7)
‘Hung like exotic fruits’ p295
‘A memory came to her from childhood, of seeing at an afternoon birthday party the famous tablecloth trick.’ P296
‘The leg was black and soft, like an overripe banana’ p296
‘They could not have begun to describe their time in the wards, or how it had changed them’ p311.
‘They saw the field ambulances among the lorries, and coming closer they saw the stretchers, score of them, set down haphazardly on the ground, and an expanse of dirty green battledress and stained bandages.’ P290
‘A wild race of men from a terrible world’ p291
‘Everywhere – a soup of smells – the sticky sour odour of fresh blood, and also filthy clothes, sweat, oil, disinfectant, medical alcohol, and drifting above it all, the stink of gangrene.’ P295
Briony doesn’t change (1)
‘I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I’ve always been’p356
Briony’s life is overwhelmingly better than Robbie’s (2)
‘In those days of May, before the story from France was fully understood, London had the outward signs, but not yet the mentality, of war’ p287
‘It was hard to believe that barely a hundred miles away was a military disaster.’ P288
Briony is given what she has always wanted - a successful career, a long life, and the final production of the trials of Arabella (1)
‘Suddenly, she was right there before me, that busy priggish, conceited little girl, and she was not dead either, for when people tittered appreciatively at ‘evanesce’ my feeble heart – ridiculous vanity! – made a little leap. p367
Briony cannot publish in her lifetime, so she isn’t punished (4)
‘I might outlive Paul Marshall, but Lola would certainly outlive me. The consequences of this are clear. The issue has been with us for years. As my editor put it once, publication equals litigation’ p359
‘She was the superior older girl, one step ahead of me… I will not be able to publish in my lifetime’ p359
‘my forensic memoir could never be published when my fellow criminals were alive.’
‘I know I cannot punish until they are dead. And, as of this morning, I accept that they will not be until I am.’ P370
Alternatively, Briony’s inability to be punished is a form of punishment, as she desires pain as a result of her actions. (1)
‘But I could hardly face that now. There was already enough that I didn’t want to be thinking about.’ P359
Robbie is unfairly punished with war (5)
‘There were horrors enough, but it was the unexpected detail that threw him and afterwards would not let him go.’ P191
‘He saw it… It was a leg in a tree. A mature plane tree, only just in leaf. The leg was twenty feet up, wedged in the first forking of the trunk, bare, severed cleanly above the knee. From where they stood there was no sign of blood or torn flesh.’ P192
‘It was a perfect leg, pale, smooth, small enough to be a child’s. The way it was angled in the fork, it seemed to be on display, for their benefit or enlightenment: this is a leg.’ P192
‘All he wanted now… was to forget about the leg’ p193
‘He thought about telling them of his own single, horrifying detail. But he didn’t want to add to the horror, and nor did he want to give life to the image while it remained at a distance’ p199
Robbie is unfairly punished with prison
‘Being here, sheltering in a barn, with an army in rout, where a child’s limb in a tree was something that ordinary men could ignore, where a whole country, a whole civilisation was about to fall, was better than being there, on a narrow bed under dim electric light, waiting for nothing’ p202.
‘He could smell the concrete floor, and the piss in the bucket, and the gloss paint on the walls, and hear the snores of the men along the row’ p202
‘The stupidity and claustrophobia. The hand squeezing on his throat.’ P202
Lola and Paul aren’t punished
‘Lola.. was able to retreat behind an air of wounded confusion, and as a treasured patient, recovering victim, lost child, let herself be bathed in the concern and guilt of the adults in her life’ p168
‘She had little more to do than remain silent behind her cousin’s zeal. Lola did not need to lie, to look her supposed attacked in the eye and summon the courage to accuse her, because all that work was done for her, innocently… Lola was required only to remain silent about the truth, banish it, and forget about it entirely..’ p168
‘But the scratches and bruises were long healed, and all her own statements at the time were to the contrary.’
‘Nor did the bride appear to be a victim… More than that, surely; a chocolate magnate, the creator of Amo.’ P325
Lola and Paul’s physical appearance in ‘London, 1999’, and Lola’s benefits in the wedding scene. This may show that they are unpunished. Alternatively, Lola appears elevated, above her attacker. (5)
‘Despite the liver spots and purplish swags under his eyes, he at last appeared the cruelly handsome plutocrat, though somewhat reduced.’ P357
‘Lola… still as lean and fit as a racing dog, and still faithful’ p358
‘There was an air of health farm about her, and an indoor tan. She was taller than her husband now, and there was no doubting her vigour.’ P358.
‘But the scratches and bruises were long healed, and all her own statements at the time were to the contrary.’
‘Nor did the bride appear to be a victim… More than that, surely; a chocolate magnate, the creator of Amo.’ P325