Narration In Ian Mcewan's Atonement

The role of Narration in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

Much of Atonement is written in third person limited omniscient narration. Although the narrative voice is consistent throughout the first two sections of the novel, the focalization of this narration shifts between the characters and the reader is provided with varying perspectives of the story world. The effect of this is that the reader is guided through the text by a homogeneous voice, but we are able to better grasp the differing frames of reference through which each character experiences the plot, this is essential to McEwan’s exploration of versions of reality. The fist sections of the text contain narration focalized through several of the novels character’s including Emily Tallis;

“She heard the house creak as it expanded. Or were the rafters and posts drying out and contracting against the masonry. Shrinking, everything was shrinking. Leon’s prospects, for example, diminishing by the

For instance: “There were moments in the summer dusk after her light was out, burrowing in the delicious gloom of her canopy bed, when she made her heart thud with luminous yearning fantasies, little playlets of themselves, everyone which featured Leon” (McEwan 4). This point of the text also displays the narrators limited omniscience when the narrator informs the reader that Briony’s play has reached it’s “highest point of fulfillment” (4). The reader detects a sense of irony in this initial revelation from the narrator upon finishing the novel when we learn that ‘The Trials of Arabella” is performed by Briony’s family for her on her seventy-seventh birthday “I knew the words were mine . . . The Trials of Arabella began” (367-368). McEwan includes this performance in order to draw attention that the narrator is not all knowing, and to warn the reader against considering the narration to be