Setting in Atonement Flashcards
Summer implies loose morals (2)
‘Hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people. Fewer layers of clothing, a thousand more places to meet. Out of doors, out of control’ p128
‘Briony’s hot headed decision. On a cooler day we’d be in the library watching the theatricals now’ p130
The hot weather in part 1 creates a sense of claustrophobia (2)
‘Airless drawing room’ p125
‘The effect of suffocation’ p125
Briony’s bedroom (3)
‘Briony’s [room] was a shrine to her controlling demon’ p5
‘Her straight-backed dolls appeared to be under strict instructions not to touch the walls… suggested by their even ranks and spacing a citizen’s army awaiting orders’ p5
‘A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit’ p5
The fountain scene (3)
‘The rolling surface had yet to recover its tranquility, and the turbulence was driven by the lingering spirit of her fury. He put his hand flat upon the surface, as though to quell it.’ P30-31
‘The damp patch on the gravel had evaporated. Now there was nothing left of the dumb show by the fountain beyond what survived in memory, in three separate and overlapping memories. The truth had become as ghostly as invention.’ P41
‘With a sound like a dry twig snapping, a section of the lip of the vase came away in his hand, and split into two…’ p29
The Library (2)
‘They began to make love against the library shelves which creaked with their movement’ p138
‘He opened his eyes. It was a library, in a house, in total silence’ p138
The crime scene (4)
‘Darkness doubled the impression of speed.’ P157 ch13
‘The way was in total blackness’ p159 ch13
‘Here too there would be no light’ p159 ch13
‘The nearer trees, or at least their trunks, had a human form. Or could conceal one. Even a man standing in front of a tree trunk would not be visible to her’ p162 ch13
‘The vertical mass was a figure, a person who was now backing away from her and beginning to fade into the darker background of the trees. The remaining darker patch on the ground was also a person, changing shape again’ p164 ch13
Description of the lake (4)
‘The island temple… had of course no religious purpose at all’ p72
‘Closer to, the temple had a sorrier look: moisture rising through a damahed damp-course had caused chunks of stucco to fall away. 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’ p72 ch7
‘Elsewhere, the exposed laths, themselves rotting away, showed through like the ribs of a starving animal’ p72 ch7
The Tallis Home (1)
‘Morning sunlight, or any light, could not conceal the ugliness of the Tallis home’. P19 ch2
It is difficult to discern between the true setting and Briony’s imagination (3)
‘To see if the twins were there fooling about with the hoses, or floating face-down in death, indistinguishable to the last. She thought how she might describe it…’ p156 ch13
‘Having changed the names, it became easier to transform the circumstances and invent’ p280
‘In the later years she regretted not being more factual, not providing herself with a store of raw material. It would have been useful to know what happened, what it looked like, who was there, what was said’ p280.
The leg (5)
‘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
‘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
The setting of war compounds Briony’s crime (1)
‘Her secret torment and the public upheaval of war had always seemed separate worlds, but now she understood how the war might compound her crime.’ P288
The contrast of prison and the wide, open fields of France portray Briony’s crime as worse than war. (4)
‘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.
‘Ahead of them the sky was beginning to clear a little and glowed like a promise… As they approached the top through a copse of chestnut trees, the lowering sun… How fine it might have been, to end a day’s ramble in the French countryside, walking into the setting sun. Always a hopeful act’ p194
‘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
Briony’s imagined imprisonment (1)
‘To Briony, it appeared that her life was going to be lived in one room, without a door.’ P288
Impact of war on Robbie - makes him violent (3)
‘In the lucid freedom of his dream state, Turner intended to shoot the officer through the chest. It would be better for everybody’ p247
‘He felt hostile to everyone around him. His feelings had shrunk to the small hard point of his own survival’ p217
‘Turner grabbed the man by his tie and was ready to smack his stupid face with an open right hand’ p217
Setting of war results in a loss of identity (2)
‘Turner’
‘Walking wounded’ p245
