An Analysis Of Briony's Journey Of Reconciliation In Atonement From The Perspective Of Trauma

Ian McEwan is one of the most influential writers in current British literary world,and his work Atonement,a representative in which love,war(violence and death)and the main character's struggle between right and wrong or good and evil are depicted carefully,brings him more attention in literary circle.Scholars at home and abroad have already studied Atonement from various perspectives such as ethics,film adaption,narration,and trauma.Nevertheless,due to the extraordinary narrative techniques in Atonement,many of the existing studies solely cover its narrative aspect.The small number of studies from the aspect of trauma are almost all short journal articles and the few longer dissertations and master theses only conduct some comparative studies between Atonement and other works of McEwan or works of other writers,without sufficient focus on Atonement.There are not studies that particularly concentrate on the traumas that the protagonist Briony Tallise experiences in the novel.Therefore,this paper analyzes the traumas of Briony in Atonement with Dominick La Capra's concepts of historical trauma and structural trauma as well as Judith Herman's discussion of traumatic disorders and the exploration of recovery process.No specific date or event can be located with respect to structural trauma.For Briony,growth background imposes great influence on her development.Briony experiences structural traumas like the absence of love and education and the lack of communication with peers so that she always lives with her imagination and it also becomes the main source to solve her problems.Unlike structural trauma,there is specific event or even the accurate date to trace back for historical trauma.Misled by her imagination,Briony commits a crime that costs her lifetime to regret: sending Robbie to prison by mistake.Briony realizes her severe mistake before long Robbie's imprisonment,so she tries to atone for it to reduce her sense of guilt,but in a wrong way: abandoning her bright future and going to cruel battlefield as a nurse so as to punish herself.What's worse,the outbreak of the war further deepens her trauma so that she lives with deep guilt for a long time and is always disturbed by traumatic disorders like intrusion and constriction,since she does not have any news about Robbie.Fortunately,Briony is finally guided to the right way for atonement.With the end of the war,Briony knows that both and Cecilia died during the war,but their love is not destroyed by her nor the war,a great comfort to her.Hence,Briony starts to confront her mistake bravely and uncover its truth in her writing.After going through the recovery stages as the establishment of safety,remembrance and mourning and re-connection,Briony finally reconciles with herself and others,and then gradually recovers from trauma.It is not easy to atone for one's mistake,but attempt is all.Briony's attempts to atone for the fatal mistake she has committed lead her to her reconciliation with herself as well as her family and friends.It is through the positive responses to the aftermaths of traumas that Briony could eventually recover and embrace her life.The depiction of Briony's lifelong efforts to remedy her own wrongdoing and the ongoing struggle between right and wrong or good and evil unfolds the complexity of humanity and Atonement certainly reveals McEwan as a responsible writer who does care about morality,saving him from the disapproving label of “Ian Macabre”.