Places / Setting Flashcards
Name the 3 significant settings in atonement ?
Tallis mansion - rape
Dunkirk - war
London - nurse briony
Part one
Tallis house
Hot day builds tension
Isolation
Upper status
Rape
Part 2
Dunkirk war
Crimes against humanity
Robbie as victim
Suffering
Pathos
Part 3
London
Brionys atonement
Crimes against reader
What is significance of part 1 and 2
Part one is calm / signifies wealth / security
Contrasted with the chaotic / horror of war in part 2
Shows how life can change so suddenly which adds pathos because audience realise robbies wasted potential.
significance of part 1 being the “hottest day in 1935”
Builds tension - of war / rape.
Builds sexual tension.
Symbolises remembrance.
Characters have reacted in the heat of the moment.
How is war significant in part 1?
It was impending and casts shadow over the action.
Paul’s amo bars.
Life is fragile and there is a sense of wars imminent destructive which adds to strange elusive quality
Pauls involvement with war.
Amo Bars
Referred to as “warmonger”
He plants to profit from the war and it looks repellent when see see the suffering in the war that has formed the foundation of his wealth
How does mcewan portray the war?
Transgression again human decency.
Mundane suffering.
Disabled by blisters / exhaustion / hunger.
Everyday torments often overlooked in depicting soldiers lives.
No part of society is untouched by war.
What do the nurses lose to the war in part 3?
Their innocence / optimism and youth.
War as a crime
Society guilty for allowing it to happen.
Allowing the suffering.
When in part 2 is there hope for humanity ?
When Robbie/ mace / nettle are in women’s barn and they expect 2 men are going to kill them but they arrive with bread/ wine to share and talk.
What is the significance of the brutality of the war ?
Robbie suffers making him innocent victim.
Wasted potential.
Pathos.
Scrutinise briony for her crimes.
“Relative isolation of Tallis house”
“It was a leg in a tree… small enough to be a child’s”
Nursery setting
Introduced Paul as a predator.
Not a conventional place for a man (who has never met the children before) to be so highlights at his sexual desires.
Enhanced by his dream of his sister and tension when Lola bites amp bar
