Atonement Sparknotes

Atonement is a postmodern novel divided into three main parts. The first part started in a hot summer day with the heroine Briony Tallis who is thirteen years old girl, preparing for a play entitled Trails of Arabella to celebrate her old brother’s coming. The play is supposed to be performed with the help of her three cousins Lola and her brothers Jackson and Pirrot Quincey whose parents are divorced and they come to live at their Aunt Emily Tallis’ house (Helander, 2013).
At that day in which her brother is supposed to be coming home, Briony witnesses her older Cecila sister with Robbie, their house keeper’s son, beside the fountain and she misunderstands the scene and thinks that Robbie is abusing her sister (ibid.). Later on at night before

Their sister Lola and the family Tallis have been shocked; thus, they all start to look for them outside the house. While they are looking for them at darkness, Briony finds her cousin Lola attacked by someone else and she could not recognise who attacks her because of the darkness; however, she claims that he is Robbie who did that because she saw him attacking her sister before; while, it was Paul Marshal, her brother’s friend (ibid.). Briony tries to convince Lola that the attacker was Robbie, and Lola asserts that he was him since she also did not see her attacker. Briony declares to the police that Robbie was the attacker and sent an innocent man to jail

She realizes that she was wrong about Robbie and Cecilia. She received a letter from her father inviting her to Paul and Lola’s wedding (Kutalkova, 2009). She attends the wedding then she realizes that Paul Marshall was the aggressor, who raped Lola that dark night not Robbie (ibid.). By the time, Briony visits Cecilia, who gets shocked to see, she meets Robbie unexpectedly there. She asks for forgiveness, but both of them refuse; however, Briony insists that she serious and search for atonement to her guilt, she apologises again and leaves (Helander,