Atonement (novel)

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Atonement ( atonement in the original ) is a novel by Ian McEwan from 2001 , published in German in a translation by Bernhard Robben in 2002. It was received positively by the critics and called a “depth psychological masterpiece” at the time . In 2001 the novel was nominated for the Booker Prize . Time magazine ranked him among the top 100 English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. In 2015 the novel was chosen by the BBC's selection of the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014 as one of the most important works of the early 21st century to date. In 2007, the British director Joe Wright made a cinema production of the same name .

The central themes of this novel are love and separation, innocence and self-knowledge, loyalty and betrayal against the backdrop of British society preparing for and then having to survive World War II.

Structure and plot of the novel

The 424-page novel is divided into four parts of unequal length. Part I takes place on the English estate of the Tallis family in 1935. An unusually hot summer day is described at a very slow narrative pace, with the events being retold and shaped from several different perspectives of those involved. The father, Jack Tallis, works and lives in London. His stays there are getting longer and longer, his presence on the estate is decreasing because he is preparing a case of defense in a London ministry. However, the mother, Emily, believes he has a mistress. She lives with the youngest daughter Briony and the domestic servants on the estate. Ten years older sister Cecilia has just finished her literature studies at Cambridge and has not yet decided what next steps in her life will take. She is at home visiting. Her brother Leon is expected with his friend Paul Marshall. The 15-year-old cousin Lola and her nine-year-old twin brothers are also in the house. Ms. Tallis took in the siblings while the parents of these children split up. To celebrate the arrival of her brother, Briony wrote the play The Visitation of Arabellas . In the middle of the rehearsals, however, she gives up the project of the performance with her cousins ​​as actors.

13-year-old Briony watches as a love story unfolds between her sister Cecilia and the son of the maid, Robbie Turner. Confronted with the adult world and their sexuality, she interprets the situation in her childlike imagination as a threat to herself and her sister. When her cousin Lola is raped, she comes to the scene first, sees the perpetrator running away in the dark and tells herself it was Robbie Turner. She testifies against him, whereupon Robbie is sentenced to prison. Only Cecilia and Robbie's mother believe in his innocence. Cecilia promises to wait for him and a little later breaks up with her family. She is training to be a nurse. Robbie is released from prison after agreeing to serve as a soldier in World War II.

Part II describes the evacuation of the British Army in Dunkirk in 1940. Robbie and two comrades make their way to the evacuation site. Wounding and attacks by dive bombers threaten to end his life several times. The thought of Cecilia and her promise give him time and again courage and the will to survive. Whether Robbie, whose wound has become infected, will actually be evacuated from Dunkirk remains open.

In Part III, Briony is in the same hospital where her sister was trained. Briony is now a student nurse herself and is involved in caring for the returning wounded soldiers. Realizing her mistake in accusing Robbie of rape, she now believes the real culprit was Paul Marshall. In a letter to her sister, she takes on the guilt of false testimony and sees her hard work caring for the wounded and dying as a kind of atonement for it. Briony is present when Lola and Paul Marshall, who made his fortune making chocolate bars for the British Army, are married in a church. Although these people could relieve Robbie, she does not find the strength to step in front of them and ask them to do so. Finally she seeks out her sister Cecilia and confesses her faults and guilt. She also meets Robbie at Cecilia's; the lovers are reunited after a long separation and despite all the terrible trials. They agree that Briony should seek through various legal measures to restore Robbie's lost honor. However, they will not forgive her.

Despite all the difficulties, Briony made small strides on the way to her actual career goal, that of a writer. Part III is signed: BT, London 1999. The final part of the novel is called London, 1999 and is only 21 pages long. The first-person narrator Briony tells the course of her 77th birthday with many details. She has learned that she has vascular dementia and will soon only be dawning. She looks back on a life as a successful writer. It can also be seen that the three previous parts of the novel were written by her. As a writer, she has taken the liberty of inventing a happy ending in which Robbie and Cecilia are united. In reality, the fate of the two was far more tragic: Robbie died of blood poisoning on the beach in Dunkirk , and Cecilia was killed in a German bombing during " The Blitz ". Briony had never found the courage to go see Cecilia and make atonement.

Reflections on atonement and the work of the writer conclude the novel. Briony concludes that neither the writer's imagination nor the nurse's hard work can ever make amends for the thirteen year old's crime. The unbridled imagination, which originally made her guilty because she believed in the truth of her testimony against Robbie, only on the fictional level of the novel could Cecilia and Robbie offer the chance for happiness that they did not experience in reality were allowed to. In the end, Briony considers whether she should not rewrite the manuscript in such a way that Cecilia and Robbie would have attended their 77th birthday in reconciliation.

characters

  • Briony Tallis - the youngest of the Tallis siblings who dreams of a career as a writer. She is 13 years old at the start of the plot and is responsible for the imprisonment of Robbie Turner. Briony is part narrator, part character of the plot.
  • Cecilia Tallis - the second oldest of the Tallis siblings. She is in love with Robbie Turner, her father's protégé and companion of her childhood. The awkward first sexual intercourse between Cecilia and Robbie in the library of the Tallis house is observed by Briony. After Robbie is falsely convicted of rape, Cecilia breaks up with her family.
  • Leon Tallis - the oldest of the Tallis siblings. Leon returns home at the beginning of the plot and is accompanied by his friend Paul Marshall.
  • Emily Tallis - Emily is the mother of Briony, Cecilia and Leon. She is opposed to her husband's promotion of Robbie Turner: “She contradicted Jack when he suggested paying for the boy's education. For her something like that smacked unwanted interference and she found it unfair to Leon and the girls. She didn't feel disproved just because he graduated from Cambridge as one of the top students. ”Emily also suffers from migraine attacks, and for much of the storyline of the first part of the novel she lies secluded in her bedroom.
  • Jack Tallis - Jack is the father of Briony, Cecilia and Leon. Jack is increasingly staying in London instead of returning to the Tallis' house. He is involved in the preparations to defend Great Britain, Emily apparently does not rule out that he is having an affair in the city: "She didn't want to know why Jack spent so many nights in a row in London. Or rather, she didn't want anyone to tell her. "
  • Robbie Turner - Robbie is the son of Grace Turner, who works as a housekeeper for the Tallis' and lives in one of the houses on their property. Robbie grew up accordingly with the Tallis siblings. Thanks to Jack Tallis's support, he received an unusually good education and enrolled at Cambridge University, where Cecilia is also studying. Wrongly convicted of raping Lola, he eventually becomes a soldier who is involved in the fighting on the European continent and is wounded.
  • Grace Turner - Grace Turner is the mother of Robbie, her husband Ernest was originally the gardener of the Tallis family: “Grace Turner became the cleaning lady of the Tallis family a week after Ernest left them. Jack Tallis felt unable to chase the young woman and her child out of the gardener's house. In the village he found a substitute gardener and assistant who was not dependent on the gardener's house. At the time, they believed that Grace would stay in the house for a year or two and then either move away or get married. Grace's good nature and her skills in cleaning and polishing […] made her popular, but it was the affection of six-year-old Cecilia and her eight-year-old brother Leon that saved them and paved the way for Robbie. ”Like Cecilia, Grace is sure that Robbie wasn't the rapist. She leaves the Tallis family after his conviction.
  • Lola Quincey - the 15-year-old cousin of the Tallis siblings. Because of the divorce of her parents, she lives with her twin brothers with the family. She is the rape victim who finally marries her real rapist Paul Marshall in the third part.
  • Danny Hardman - the sidekick of the Tallis family. Robbie and Cecilia suspect him of raping Lola until Briony tells them the real culprit.
  • Paul Marshall - a friend of Leon who made great wealth by making a chocolate substitute for the British soldiers. He's the one who actually raped Lola and got married in the third part.
  • Betty - housekeeper of the Tallis family

Individual aspects of the novel

title

With the choice of the title Atonement , Ian McEwan gives the reader the dominant theme of the novel. This way, with which the author leads his readers, is not common, but the 19th century can be up to the start trace: Jane Austen's novel Persuasion (English title. Persuasion ) deals with the consequences when people do not their preference but follow the advice of others. However, this has become more common in the last few decades. Prominent examples include JM Coetzee's novel Shame (English title. Disgrace , 1999), Salman Rushdie's novels shame and disgrace (English title:. Shame , 1983) and anger (English title. Fury , 2001), Peter Carey's Bliss (1981, translated Bliss or Happiness), Anita Brookners Providence (1982, translated Providence) and AS Byatts Obsessed (1982, English title Possession ).

References to other works of literary history

Ian McEwan refers to several other literary works in his novel . These include, among others, Gray's Anatomy , Virginia Woolfs Die Wellen , Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (German title of the latest translation Im Dunkeln ), Henry James ' The Golden Bowl , Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey , Samuel Richardson's Clarissa , Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita , Rosamond Lehmann's Dusty Answer and Shakespeare's dramas The Tempest , Macbeth , Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream . McEwan himself stated that he was directly influenced by LP Hartley 's The Go-Between (German also The Customs of Luck or A Summer in Brandham Hall). In the course of the plot, Briony also mentions the literary critic and editor Cyril Connolly in a (fictional) letter .

Weather

The events of the first part of the novel take place against the backdrop of a heat wave unusual for England. Leon Tallis comments on this with the words:

“I love England during a heat wave. It's a different country. All the rules change. "

In fact, the fatal evening in 1935 followed the conventions of the English upper class. The people in the Tallis' house come to dinner where, despite the heat, roast beef and Brussels sprouts are served and although they would rather have a glass of cool water like the children, the adults have to drink sweet wine as an aperitif . None of the three floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining room can be opened because the window frames have warped over the decades and warm dust rises from the Persian carpet in the room . As if she knew about the sexual relationship that had just begun between Cecilia and Robbie and as if she anticipated the further events of the evening, Emily replied to her son's remark:

“My parents always believed that hot weather only led to loose morals in young people. Fewer layers of clothing, thousands of places to meet. Out of home and out of control. Your grandmother in particular was always restless when it was summer. She always dreamed up thousands of reasons to keep me and my sisters in the house. "

John Mullan points out that great heat is an issue in the works of many British authors, citing EM Forster , Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene as examples . whose novels are often set in exotic hot places. But he also refers to Jane Austen, in whose novel Emma Wetter is an essential element in moving the plot forward. There is also a heat wave here, under the influence of which the alleged refinement of some of the protagonists is eroded. In Thomas Hardy's novel Tess von den d'Urbervilles (1891), Angel Clare develops an increasingly sexual passion for the heroine during a heat wave. According to John Mullan, Ian McEwan at apology makes particularly effective use of this special weather situation.

“Atonement plays particularly effectively with the importance of the weather in memory, with the idea that the summers of the past were hotter. The structure of the novel - in which the events in the first part are obsessively recalled in the following three parts - causes the hot, oppressively stuffy days of the beginning of the novel to appear as if they belonged to another time: distant, long gone, but still noticeable due to the memorable, inescapable weather. "

Plagiarism controversy

Towards the end of 2006 it became known that the writer Lucille Andrews was of the opinion that Ian McEwans did not appreciate the extent to which he had drawn material from her 1977 autobiography No Time for Romance for describing London nursing during World War II have borrowed. McEwan found himself free from any plagiarism, while at the same time admitting that this autobiography was an essential source of inspiration for him. McEwans had mentioned Andrews and her autobiography in the book's Acknowledgments, and several other writers sided with McEwans, including John Updike , Martin Amis , Margaret Atwood , Thomas Keneally , Zadie Smith, and the otherwise publicly shy Thomas Pynchon .

Reviews

In “Atonement”, Ian McEwan dedicates himself to his old, the big issues - love and separation, innocence and self-knowledge, the passage of time - and he does this more confidently, more powerfully and more captivating than ever. [...] McEwan has written a novel called "Atonement" that consciously shows and thus questions its own mechanisms. The result shows that it is still possible to create great contemporary literature with the means of classical modernism. "

- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“Ian McEwan wrote a novel about literature that is also a novel about people. At the same time - therein lies the art. Not a book in which, in addition to various characters, there are also some theoretical literary considerations, but a book that asks about the morality of writing and regards writing, i.e. imagining, as a particularly delicate form of moral action. [...] Here the ethical and the aesthetic coincide in a prose that wants to be meaningful and yet can be clear. "

- The time

Self-statement

" Atonement is a book that is about reflection and reconciliation. How individuals deal with their present and past and the knowledge of things that cannot be undone. [...] My previous novels were based on ideas and conceptual, sometimes biographical, constructs. Atonement is a step in a new direction, an exploration of emotional worlds in the tradition of the 19th century, the literary figures of which appeared truthful and tangible, and made the reader empathize with them and take part in their fate. It's the most ambitious thing I've ever achieved, not just quantitatively but also thematically. Because it tries to describe a historical epoch that serves as a frame of reference for a love story. A love story with a sad or at least ambivalent outcome. "

- Ian McEwan : Frankfurter Rundschau

Awards

For the novel, McEwan was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize , the National Book Critics Circle Award and the WH Smith Literary Award , among others . Moreover stood apology on the shortlist for the Booker Prize .

Film adaptation and opera

In the film of the same name , the main roles were cast with prominent actors such as Keira Knightley , James McAvoy and Vanessa Redgrave . He was nominated in seven categories at the 2008 Golden Globe Awards . He was awarded for Best Film Drama . Dario Marianelli received the second Golden Globe for best film music . Christopher Hampton won an award for the screenplay at the 2007 Satellite Awards , and the film was also nominated in four other categories: Knightley and Ronan for Best Actor, Score, and Costumes.

The plot of the novel was also implemented as an opera. The libretto was written by Craig Raine and the music was implemented by Michael Berkeley .

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Julie Ellam: Ian McEwan's "Atonement" (Continuum Contemporaries). Continuum International, London 2009, ISBN 0-8264-4538-1
  • Jonathan Noakes, Margaret Reynolds: Ian McEwan: "Child in Time", "Enduring Love", "Atonement": The Essential Guide. Vintage, London 2002, ISBN 0-09-943755-4
  • Thomas Wortmann: In the twilight of fiction. Ian McEwan's novel "Atonement" (2002). In: rebellious - desperate - infamous. The bad girl as an aesthetic figure. Edited by Renate Möhrmann , Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-89528-875-3 , pp. 449–474.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Evelyn Finger : One long day's journey into the night . In: Die Zeit , No. 39/2002
  2. ↑ Atonement. Vintage, London 2010, Epub ISBN 9781409090021 . S. 142. The original quote is: “She had opposed Jack when he proposed paying for the boy's education, which smacked of meddling to her, and unfair on Leon and the girls. She did not consider herself proved wrong simply because Robbie had come away from Cambridge with a first. "
  3. ↑ Atonement. Vintage, London 2010, Epub ISBN 9781409090021 . P. 140. The original quote is: “She did not wish to know why Jack spent so many consecutive nights in London. Or rather, she did not wish to be told. "
  4. ↑ Atonement. Vintage, London 2010, Epub ISBN 9781409090021 . P. 82. The original quote is: “Grace Turner became the Talloses' cleaner the week after Ernest walked away. Jack Tallis did not have it in him to turn out a young woman and her child. In the village he found a replacement garender and handyman who was not in need of a tied cottage. At the time it was assumed Grace would keep the bungalow for a year or two before moving on or remarrying. Her good nature and her knack with the polishing […] made her popular, but it was the adoration she aroused in the six-year-old Cecilia and her eight-year-old brother Leon that was the saving of her, and the making of Robbie. "
  5. ^ John Mullan: How Novels Work. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-928178-7 . P. 18.
  6. ^ The Modernism of Ian McEwan's Atonement MFS Modern Fiction Studies - Volume 56, Number 3, Fall 2010, pp. 473–495
  7. ↑ Atonement. Vintage, London 2010, Epub ISBN 9781409090021 . P. 200.
  8. ↑ Atonement . Vintage, London 2010, Epub ISBN 9781409090021 . P. 120. In the original the quote is: “I love England in a heat wave. It's a different country. All the rules change. "
  9. ↑ Atonement. Vintage, London 2010, Epub ISBN 9781409090021 . P. 120. The original quote is: “It was always the view of my parents that hot wwather encouraged loose morals among young people. Fewer layers of clothing, a thousand more places to meet. Out of doors, out of control. Your grandmother especially was uneasy when it was summer. She would dream up a thousand reasons to keep my sisters and me in the house. "
  10. ^ John Mullan: How Novels Work. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-928178-7 . P. 201.
  11. ^ John Mullan: How Novels Work. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-928178-7 . S. 201. In the original the quote is: “Antonymen trades effectively on the importance of weather to recollection, the idea that summers were always hotter in the past. The structure of the novel - the events of its first part compulsively recollected in the following three parts - make the hot, suffocating days of its opening seem to belong to another time: distant, past, yet palpably there in the memorable, inescapable sense of the weather. "
  12. ↑ Ian McEwan accused of stealing ideas from romance novelist . In: Daily Mail , November 25, 2006. 
  13. ↑ To inspiration, yes. Did I copy from another author? No . In: Guardian Online , November 27, 2006. Archived from the original on December 6, 2006. 
  14. ↑ Ben Hoyle: McEwan hits back at call for atonement . In: Times Online , November 27, 2006. 
  15. ↑ McEwan accused of copying writers memoirs . In: PR inside . Retrieved on July 19, 2014.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.pr-inside.com
  16. ↑ Atonement. Vintage, London 2010, Epub ISBN 9781409090021 . P. 353.
  17. ^ Nigel Reynolds: Recluse speaks out to defend McEwan . In: The Daily Telegraph , December 6, 2006. Retrieved July 19, 2014. 
  18. ^ Dan Bell: Pynchon backs McEwan in 'copying' row . In: The Guardian , December 6, 2006. Retrieved July 19, 2014 April 2014. 
  19. ↑ Quoted from Ian McEwan: Atonement - Poisoned Lines In: FAZ, August 31, 2002. Retrieved September 29, 2013.
  20. ↑ Quoted after a long day's journey into the night In: Die Zeit, September 19, 2002. Retrieved September 29, 2013.
  21. ↑ Jörn Jacob Rohwer : "I appeal to the fear of the reader". Writer Ian McEwan on childhood beatings, his time as a garbage collector and writing as therapy . In: Frankfurter Rundschau Magazin . No. 35/2002 , August 31, 2002, p. 2 f .
  22. ↑ a b Internet Movie Database : Nominations and Awards
  23. ↑ Ben Hoyle, "We've had the book and film, now it's Atonement the opera" , The Times (London) 2010 in times online, March 19 Accessed on July 19, 2014.