Setting Flashcards
The Tallis house
The Tallis house in part 1 creates a closed narrative. It serves as the central setting for the story, representing the upper-class family’s wealth and social standing, and acting as a microcosm of the societal structures of the time, with its grandeur and isolation reflecting the complexities of the Tallis family dynamics and the events that unfold within its walls;it is essentially a character in itself, symbolizing the family’s decline and the consequences of their choices.
The Tallis house issymbolicof the family’s success. Significantly, the Tallis money has been made in‘patents on padlocks, bolts, latches and hasps’(p. 19), which may suggest to the reader the locked-down and exclusive nature of their lives.
During the war, the house is forced to take in evacuees, causing irreversible upheaval (p. 278). The house’s conversion to a leisure facility and hotel is symbolic of the changing social structure in England.
‘Morning sunlight, or any light, could not conceal the ugliness of the Tallis home’ ‘lead-paned baronial Gothic’ 2:19 - foreshadows the ugly events that will occur here.
The Island Temple
‘Sometime in the late nineteenth century clumsy repairs were made with unpainted cement which had turned brown and gave the building a mottled, diseased appearance. Elsewhere the exposed laths, themselves rotting away, showed through like the ribs of a starving animal.’ ch7p72
The Island temple built in the lake has fallen into a state of disrepair having been neglected by the Tallis family & it’s faded granduer is symbolic of the family’s steady decline in status.
‘The temple was the orphan of a 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.’ ch7,p73
Personification is used to describe the temple as“the orphan of a grand society lady… with no one to care for it, no one to look up to”amplifying the theme of the absent parent. It is also described as having“grown old before its time, and let itself go”which can be read as being symbolic of Lola, or Briony, after the climactic event in Part One. It is significant that the island temple will be the setting for the crime which is approaching.
Robbie’s house
Robbie’s house, his mother’s bungalow, is full of confined and“narrow”spaces:“his small bedroom, his bathroom and the cubicle wedged between them he called his study”.
The obvious contrast with the sprawling spaces of the Tallis household illustrates the class divide between Robbie and the Tallises. ch8p78
Tallis household kitchen in chapter 9
‘Downstairs the knot of impatience would be tightening in the kitchen’ ch9pg97
Metaphor - tension building
Semantic field of heat used to describe the atmosphere in the kitchen represents the tension in the household: ‘blurred red glow’, ‘the coal fire’, ‘the steam rose thickly from a vat of boiling water which no one was attending.’
Tallis dining room in chapter 11
The atmosphere in the dining room is stifling, both from the oppressive heat and the emotions kept in check. Paul’s sickly cocktail, the overly warm dessert, and the forced overeating all contribute to the suffocating feeling that fills the space. Just like the food and drinks, the excess and extravagance are overwhelming and uncomfortable. This mirrors the growing tension in the novel. A series of small incidents have been exaggerated by the characters, yet their impact has been contained, creating a sense of mounting pressure. The scene longs for a moment of cool, fresh relief to counter the heat of the evening. McEwan builds this pressure through the rich details of the indulgent food, the restrained love-making in the library, and the petty arguments during the meal.
There are two narrative voices in this chapter also used to create tension: The omniscient narrator at the dinner table vs the Centre of consciousness of Robbie in the flashback.
Quotes:
‘The cocktail; was not particularly refreshing’
‘Nearly all the adults entering the airless dining room were nauseated… the effect of suffocation was heightened by the dark-stained panelling…’
‘none of the three tall windows would open’ ‘an aroma of warm dust rose to meet the diners as they entered’
(125)
The Farmhouse in Part 2
A small, rural dwelling in war-torn Northern France, where Robbie Turner and his fellow soldiers briefly seek shelter during their retreat to Dunkirk.
Juxtaposition: While the Tallis family’s grand estate is filled with privilege and social decorum, the farmhouse portrays a more raw and basic reality.
Mace ‘set up a door on brick piles for a table. He took out half a candle from his pocket’ (196) this provides are stark contrast with the meal we just read about in this Tallis dining room in part one.
The farmhouse represents a moment of vulnerability and human connection amidst the brutality of war.
How does McEwan use setting to expose the horrors of war?
“One field of cattle had a dozen shell craters, and fragments of flesh, bone and brindles skin had been blasted across a hundred-yard strech.” (214) - visceral imagery
“towards a black could of burning oil that stood above the horizon, marking out Dunkirk” (216) - visually foreboding, almost a nightmarish vision.
Dunkirk
Surreal juxtaposition between the descriptions of the resort of Bray with it’s ‘cheerful front of cafes and little shops’ (248) and the chaotic scenes on the beach where ‘He saw thousands of men, ten, twenty thousand, perhaps more.’ gathered in confusion
‘In the distance they were like grains of black sand… they looked as placid as cattle.’ (247/248) - dehumanisation of the soldiers.
London
“The unease was not confined to the hospital. It seemed to rise with the turbulent brown river swollen by the April rains…”(p269).
Part Three opens with a change of setting, to London in the late spring of 1940. McEwan immediately creates an ominous atmosphere of something“about to”happen
The opening sentence of Part Three uses symbolism of a“turbulent”river to foreshadow future turmoil as the wounded men return from Dunkirk. Tension and“unease”are building, symbolised by the“swollen”river.
Hospital - Part 3
The narrative is almost entirely set in the hospital where everyone is bracing themselves for what is to come.
There is“a certain disquiet, an almost superstitious dread”among the student nurses and the unusual simile on p270 (“Empty beds spread across the ward… like deaths in the night”) seems to foreshadow events in the near future.
The church Lola and Paul get married in
There is a juxtaposition with how Briony imagines the curch to look and how it looks in reality:
“She had been imagining the scene of a crime, a gothic cathedral “…a stained-glass backdrop of lurid suffering”
“what appeared among the trees as she approached was a brick barn of elegant dimensions, like a Greek Temple…” “windows of plain glass”
A reminder that Briony’s imagination is not always accurate
Cecilia’s house
The shabby house which Cecilia lives in suggests that severing contact with her family has affected her financially.
The room she lives in gives the initial impression of her living“a simple and lonely life”(p335).
There is a sense of suffocation and confinment in the setting of Briony’s visit:
“the walls were papered with a design of pale vertical strips, like a boy’s pyjamas, which heightened the sense of confinement.” (335)
“This narrow room with its stripes like bars contained a history of feeling that no one could imagine.” (337)- simile creates prison imagery.
“the room seemed to have shrunk.” (340) “the room appeared to shrink even smaller.” (343)
“the tiny kitchen” (338)
Balham tube station
Briony parts from her sister outside Balham tube station, which the narrative mentions will be bombed in three months’ time: “They stood outside Balham tube station, which is three months’ time would achieve its terrible form of fame in the Blitz.” - retrospective narrative
This is the setting for Briony’s final apology. Only in the next section of the novel do we learn that Cecilia in fact dies at this location.
“The music was still playing as turned into the drive of Tilney’s Hotel” (p363).
The Tallis house is now a hotel. It, and its grounds, have undergone many changes.
Briony returning the the Tallis home creates a cyclical structure, as she returns to the scene of the crime in part 1.
Allusion to Henry Tilney: The reference to “Tilney’s” is an allusion to Jane Austen’s novel, Northanger Abbey and, specifically, the character of Henry Tilney who speaks the lines quoted in the epigraph to Atonement: “Dear Miss Morland….”.
The Miss Morland to whom these words are addressed is Catherine Morland, the heroine of the novel who, like Briony, misinterprets the world around her due to her love of fiction and story-telling.
