Truth In Ian Mcewan's Atonement

Regarded as the great novelist in Britain, Ian McEwan is well aware of the truth in fictions. In his point of view, truth can't be defined apart from one's feeling. He argues that self-persuasion plays an important role in the perception of truth and insists that the pleasure of writing is that one can dictate all the terms. Moreover, he holds that the only truth readers can know in the process of reading is through the character's eyes. Atonement, which chronicles the British history ranging from 1930s to modern 1999, is McEwan's another attempt to carry out his concept of truth on writing.In Atonement, McEwan endows characters with the gift of imagination or preconception of social difference. For characters, their interpretations of the world are based on their knowingness instead of on the realities they see around; that"seeing is believing"doesn't meet their appetite for interpretation of truth. Therefore, characters'interpretations are bias and abstract. One of the major themes of seems to be the relationship between truth and imagination, which entangle each other to deepen the meaning of fictions. When reading Atonement, readers seem to fall into a complicated world imbued with truth and fiction. With the special narrative structure and unreliable Briony working as an implied reader, readers are continually misled during their participation in the process of seeking truth. The identities of character, narrator and author that Briony shoulders make readers doubt truth in Atonement. The revelation of Briony as author of the major part of Atonement in the epilogue tells that truth in the novel is fictional. Since characters interpret truth from different premises and readers are misled, truth in Atonement is difficult to comprehend. Throughout Atonement, McEwan shows his anxiety of truth. He concerns about truth in the process of interpreting as well as writing. His anxiety of truth originates from the unexpected truth which is obtained in the questing process and far different away from his expectation and from the dilemma he encounters when writing about truth in a novel, especially a novel writing about history.In Atonement, McEwan tries to perform his understanding of truth in fiction writing, expresses his anxiety of truth in interpreting and writing and also demonstrates his view of writing history in the postmodern era. Thus through Atonement, McEwan provides us a new insight into the different ways of interpreting truth.