Atonement经典读后感有感
《Atonement》是一本由Ian McEwan著作，Vintage出版的平装图书，本书定价：16.50美元，页数：384，特精心从网络上整理的一些读者的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。
《Atonement》精选点评：
●第一次读IM是上海译文出的中文版＜在切瑟尔海滩上＞(又是因为被干净又用心的装桢吸引我看书还真是特别外貌协会,上海译文一生推)然后发现自己很容易将性描写作为喜欢上某个作家的原因(比如IM比如村上)。IM细腻得有点絮叨描述的场景画面感很强让我忍不住脑补很多，像这部作品里男女主的神情眉毛和嘴角的角度，水和石头折射阳光的程度，夏日午后空气的味道等等。这次读了原版感觉特别好。＜切＞里只是围绕出新婚之夜一场没有发生的性爱以涟漪的形态环环展开，有那么点诙谐的感觉。＜赎＞里却是一对从未正式开始就双双离世的苦情恋人只有Come back. I'll wait for you.(突然觉得好感人)真正的结局满满的负能量，谁是无辜谁是有罪谁被归咎折磨谁付出代价，似乎没有一样与想象中应有的结局相同。
●结构明晰，内容稍有冗长。爱又战胜一切，不是么？且让他们在自己的小说里团员并不是怜悯。
●如果电影是一百分，原著就是一千分！有很长一段时间都快读不下去了因为看一两页就不停地哭。麦克尤恩一如既往地冷静，技巧游刃有余，而传递的力量则在不动声色中把人虐的死去活来。对每个人、每种人不同的心理有如此精准高超的把握，是我每读完一本麦的小说的赞叹
●对电影版的印象已经很淡了，但可以肯定的是原著绝对比电影要好看得多，毕竟心理描写是电影体现不出的。书的前面一小部分读得比较吃力，但自图书馆事件之后就开始跌宕起伏了。Briony晚年的自我叙述更是让人唏嘘不已。
●I face an incoming tide of forgetting, then oblivion. I no longer possess the courage of my pessimism
●断断续续一年半，终于靠着晚点的飞机看完了
●意识流+POV，大概花了六天才磕磕绊绊地看完，比电影更细腻也更琐碎，以后遇到意识流真的躲着走……
●从09年看到现在总算看完了。知道了情节后就更没动力看下去，其实写得挺一般的，只有第二部分Briony在医院守护伤兵的描写令我特别感动，也可能是我越来越看不了小说了。
●Always, we cannot do anything while meeting with FATE or DESTINY. That's it.
● @2019-04-06 23:29:58
《Atonement》读后感(一)：后现代元小说的手法
终于看完。在情节上实在是not much happened，看到结尾感觉看到了后现代元小说的写法。以审稿编辑的口吻讨论前面的故事应该怎么写，Robbie和Cecelia到底活没活下来不重要了，重要的是读者想看一个happy ending，而作为小说家的Briony成全了他们，她与他们的浪漫通过这部小说能够活下去。标题叫《赎罪》，Briony去做护士去写这本小说就能赎罪了吗？显然不能。其实我也不知道这小说想表达什么。故事并不能让人读得酣畅淋漓，也许这就是后现代想要表达的效果——不要沉浸进去。并且在最后突然说：这都是假的呀！这是我的稿子！而作为小说之外的在读这本书的我们，这句statement依然是假的，虚构的。庄生梦蝶，何为真何为假，我们在看小说中人物的悲欢离合，谁又在看我们呢？
《Atonement》读后感(二)：come back
Cecilia和Robbie送Briony坐地铁，Briony走进地铁站，就此永别姐姐和准姐夫。之后作者写下以下文字，终结小说惊心动魄的第三部分。
quot;... She was surprised at how serene she felt, and just a little sad. Was it disappointment？ She had hardly expected to be forgiven. What she felt was more like homesickeness, though there was no source for it, no home. But she was sad to leave her sister. It was her sister she missed - or more precisely, it was her sister with Robbie. Their love. Neither Briony nor the war had destroyed it. This was what soothed her as she sank deeper under the city. How Cecilia had drawn him to her with her eyes. That tenderness in her voice when she called him back from his memories, from Dunkirk, or from the roads that led to it. She used to speak like that to her sometimes, when Cecilia was sixteen and she was a child of six and things went impossibly wrong. Or in the night, when Cecilia came to rescue her from a nightmare and take her into her own bed. Those were the words she used. 'Come back. It was only a bad dream. Briony, come back.' ..." (P. 349)
come back. 没有了爱和亲情，我们会是什么？面对亲手摧毁的爱和亲情，除了绝望，还能剩下什么？最后一刻，只有乡愁，永远剪不断。
《Atonement》读后感(三)：编史元小说入门
好神奇想起来去年冬天一页一页翻着看，睡前看一点然后虐得老泪纵横地开始睡觉。看到中途激动地放下书喊西八我竟然看得懂法语了的水平。
麦克尤恩真的很写实，写欧陆战场写着写着还跑出来些法国人大喊你们是谁，俺看懂了男主这边回答昂格莱斯激动得心都不痛了。请问，假如我写抗日背景的编史元小说，然后突然开始出现日语，冲突吗？这样看某些作品中的侵华日军揪着别扭口音喊八格牙路什么的简直泰considerate
言归正传，故事是好故事，但是在这种网文光怪陆离情节层出不穷的年代看不免有俗气。应该是更受文体学或者英文文学学术界更青睐的作品，毕竟是典型编史元——在真实的历史环境下放置虚构的故事，虚构人物的人生与非虚构的现实交织。
一旦学会了编史元的概念看啥都是编史元小说，《四朝代》也是，《杀死一只知更鸟》是不是七七八八也算，有大萧条的蛛丝马迹在里面……
看了点梁晓晖老师关于这个的论文然后忘得一干二净啦
包括她最后讨论Briony为Cecilia和Robbie编了个幸福快乐生活在了一起的结尾实则的含义：如果归入现实主义，结尾就只是画蛇添足，如果归入后现代主义，结尾就很画龙点睛。我猜这也是为啥我看的这个版本最后还煞有介事整的跟青少年课外读本一样让俺猜结尾到底是he还是be，各有啥意义……西八，吓得我梦回童年
whatever……academics你们真有意思（这不就是没事找事吗（bushi)。以及谢谢梁奶奶离职前还让俺认识到俺不适合学术，哪哪的学术都不适合
放下学术的概念只把本书当做睡前读物，忽视麦克尤恩一些肉麻别扭矫情的词，阅读体验也还可以……不知道现在有没有下降orz
体感Briony是喜欢Robbie的，只是喜欢得太懵懂或她视情欲为虎狼而不敢承认，但是她故意跳水让Robbie去捞她那里……哎呀呀，我还记得我哪天晚上看到吐血放下书大骂这竟然是狗血姐妹争一男故事
最最感人的确实是Briony放弃去牛桥读书的机会来到伦敦做护士这里，是真的在赎罪了。我最喜欢的片段是护士长（Sister）喊她，这个会点法语的护士，去照料一个法国小伙子那里（感谢天，感谢地，感谢伊恩·麦克尤恩写这段的时候就写了几句法语意思意思，不然要整页整页的法语的话就裂开了……）叫啥啊小伙子……Luc吗？？一上来夸Briony你Sister认真不错，Briony回护士长人确实不错，再下一句问那你sister和她爱人最近如何呢……
——and the Best 双关语er Award goes to Monsieur Ian McEwan(TvT
这种想象和现实的来回切是不是就是后现代主义的一大特色来着……
然后接下来卢克小伙子仍旧神志不清东拉西扯，Briony配合演出，然后到他说头痛麻烦Briony帮忙重新扎一下绷带那里，露出来海绵状的脑髓
说真的，现在回想我都仿佛能看到伊恩老爷子预料到读者看到这里要心碎震惊成啥样的洋洋得意之态
上一秒还在说我家面包诺村第一（忘了具体哪个地名了，书不在手边），我妹妹德彪西弹得越来越好啦的小伙子下一秒就咽了气，Briony赶在他咽气前破戒告诉他她的first name，真切地接受他的求婚——至少在这个瞬间是真的爱上了。想起来Briony一开始说姓氏，Luc还煞有介事夸好名字好名字，我还红红火火笑了好一会儿。作者真是太会埋雷了。不过过了一年多再回想发现这当中有个隐藏角色，Luc远在法国的女朋友，这个女孩子战乱年代又去了哪里呢……
真的看得非常上头，以至于收到了曾经暗恋过的人的新年祝福后，被一种不把话说清楚我可能明天就要死在敦刻尔克的沙滩上或者是贝尔汉姆地铁站里的感觉haunted了很久很久
后来去翻出来一直存在电脑里但一直没看的电影，只挑了中间扛伤员那段看，看到血肉模糊的假肢道具的时候还笑出了声音。Dario Marianelli真的是和Joe Wright合作太多次太有默契了，我都要好奇一秒是他先写的曲子，剪辑再按这个节奏来剪还是剪辑好了，他再作的曲，画面和音乐synchronize得太过分以至于我的脑子都在尖叫。
到战地医院支线情节的一个小高潮，Luc病床旁的帘子放下来，护士长安慰Briony做得好，推她去洗洗血污，Briony满手是血面无表情地从病床间的过道往镜头方向走，Clair de Lune猝不及防地响起——我那一刻很清楚明白地从心底咆哮：虾仁猪心也不过如此
《Atonement》读后感(四)：Mistakes, consequences, and the whatifs
quot;Come back. I will wait for you."
It's a long journey. Deaths are around. Thirsty. Starved. Blistered. Tired. You keeps me walking. Every time touching your letter in the chest pocket. That moment, in the early morning mist, amid all the confusion and the judged hostility, you ran to me, your hand touching mine, cuffed in cold metal. It's a moment of ours that we claimed with right.
And you said:" It's ours. It's ours only. Come back. I will wait for you."
We were then worlds apart. Never to meet again.
Despite the title, the novel is not about atonement. It's not about Briony, though one cannot help feel sympathy for her own torturement, particularly in that tender moment in the ward when she fell in love with the French soldier, who died a moment later. Falling in futile love is one of her ways of atonement, in a way, I guess.
It's about how a random incident played its consequences in two people's lives. Powerful, irreversible, consequences. Love, despite the immense hopes that it carries, does not deliver the miracle that we are told to believe in. Cecilia and Robbie might as well marry someone else. Won't their lives be easier？
Yet, we love love. In the journeys we take, we think there is a goal that is loftier enough to rationalize all our doings in hindsight. Steve Jobs said so. One tried, crashed, burnt, redoubled, again, and again, until one finally found out that giving up is the best shortcut life has to offer.
It's in this light that I read "Atonement". I thought I am enlightened enough than this. But when Robbie joyously walked across the park to the dinner party, fully anticipating to marvel at the excitement of life that suppose to wait in his future, I realized with the gut wrenching I knew so well his doom was written long before Briony committed her "crime".
I wept for both Cecilia and Robbie, but mostly for Robbie. Though most of his peers suffered in their bodies, he suffered in his heart -- he is so driven to chase what he believes is his. And that rarely works.
Vivid, rich, in its every details. "Atonement" is an overwhelming experience for anyone who thinks he already knows enough, and yet, still quite cannot forget what he used to be.
《Atonement》读后感(五)：Text Analysis of <Atonement>
本篇为英文文体风格鉴赏课程的期末文本分析作业。
Introduction
Ian McEwan, a famous English novelist and screenwriter, who was born in a working class family in 1948. He first graduated from the University of Sussex, majoring in English literature, then received his master’s degree in literature form the University of East Anglia. He started his brilliant career as a writer in 1975 with a maiden work- a collection of short stories, named “First Love, Last Rites”. Gifted and diligent as he is, he rapidly gained fame with novels kept coming out, even got featured on the list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" by The Times and ranked number 19 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture" by The Daily Telegraph. These honors and awards have confirmed his position at the forefront of the contemporary British literary world, and have ensured him a niche in the British literary pantheon.
When reading his novels, you will be attracted to his prose if astonishing precision and power, and continually surprised by his ambition, breadth and tireless spirit for exploration of his scope.
In 2001, the novel Atonement came off the press, which falls under the genre of fiction, mystery and suspense, garnering acclaim promptly and widely regarded as one of Ian’s best and most influential works. Thus, it got its splendid film adaption in 2007 and was named in the list of “the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923” by TIME magazine in 2010 undoubtedly. The book is set time of pre, present, and post World War II, just as McEwan’s habit as always anchoring his works in the past [1]. However, he is by no means a historical novelist for his novels attempting to reflect the Zeitgeist. Just as we can feel in Atonement, he portrayed how the ever-changing political, social, and cultural climate impacted the lives of ordinary or at times extraordinary people, like Robbie, Cecilia and Briony.
Atonement, as a massive hit in contemporary literature, is extraordinary in language, narrative techniques and theme, which tells a story of love, guilt, war, writing and imagination. The tragedy begins with Briony Tallis, the leading character and the narrator in this fiction, who mistakenly caused series of misfortune between her sister Cecilia and her beloved boyfriend Robbie, the son of their butler, finally leading them to separation and deaths. Suffering from the irretrievable mistake, Briony then spent her whole life writing the autobiographical novel Atonement, trying to atone for her own crime.
The novel consists of three parts and a postｓｃｒｉｐｔ, with a time span of more than 60 years. Critics are always arguing whether placing it in the postmodernism of the turn of the century [2] or in the realism for it depicted the society and situation during World War II.
art one is seemingly the closest the novel comes to modernism. It tells a story happened in a fateful hot summer day in 1935, when all the dramatic conflicts converge, in the abbey of the Tallis. Briony Tallis, the owner’s daughter, was at her age of thirteen, with rich immature imagination and a strong willing to write. Briony has her own system of representation of the world, with an acute sense of justice and order. However, she witnessed her sister Cecilia taking off her dress and jumped into the fountain in front of Robbie, which became the occasion of her first misguided interpretation of their relationship, read the wrong impolitic letter from Robbie to Cecilia, even discovered them intertwining in the study. A young girl at her age certainly thought he was a maniac and raped Cecilia. In the same night, when she ran into Lola, her cousin, being raped by a man Robbie’s height, she accused Robbie on no evidence to be the criminal without a haste. Robbie was sent to prison and forced to be apart from Cecilia sine then.
And here comes the second part took place in1940, with World War II going on. Robbie was sent to France to fight with the British Army in requital for being released from jail. The vivid and realistic relation of one day in Robbie’s war experience during the evacuation of Dunkerque (also Dunkirk in English), where, we will learn later, the injured Robbie lost his life for septicemia.
art three is approximately contemporaneous with the previous part for it is based on the imagination and confession of Briony as no longer a “stupid child”. It is now focalized on Briony, who becomes a nurse in a London hospital, where Cecilia once worked, to expiate her crime against Robbie and her sister. She finally realized the inexcusable mistake was totally fabricated on her own thinking out of her ignorance, immaturity, impetuousness and even jealousy, so she screwed up her courage to talk these through Cecilia, while happen to meet Robbie at the same time. Things seem to get better.
The “London, 1999” in bold brings us back to reality all of a sudden. Readers are disappointed to find out that the happy ending was nothing but imagination or illusion, the truth is the couple never meet each other after departing and both died in 1940. The previous parts are all novels of Briony for the sake of memory and atonement.
In this essay, I am going to analyze the novel based on Part 3, Chapter 6 for my favorite extract in Atonement has been chosen as the example for our textbook. The extract tells how Briony goes to Cecilia’s, explains the whole crime she has committed and surprisingly notices that Robbie is still alive and living with her sister finally (in Briony’s imagination). This part is fall of dialogues and profile deｓｃｒｉｐｔions.
The first year in senior high school, I was luckily enough to have watched the renowned movie “Atonement”, which won an Oscar for Best Original Score, for the film stars James McAvoy and Keira Knightley in it were actually my favorite. The unusual narrative structure fascinated me, as the timeline was not continuous nor unified. The deep impression of the movie leads me to choose Atonement as my object of study.
The most intriguing aspect of the novel, that gives the title, is the error of perception made by Briony Tallis, which leads to a series of calamities consequently in the following years. From her vision of the world, she sees what she wants to see, and her interpretation of facts proves to be mistaken. The atonement to which the title refers becomes the goal of her life, and her text, as she struggles somehow to make amends for the irrevocable damage [3].
Lexical Rhetoric
It is believed that figures of speech have the magical power of lighting up the language. There are words such as verbs, adjectives, nouns and even function words such as conjunctions, interjections and onomatopoeic words, etc.
What are mental words？ Mental words can be named as internal words as well, for they refer to the representation of words such as nouns, adjectives and verbs relating to “psyche” and “mentality”, often act as marked voices, revealing writer’s peculation about a character’s feelings or thoughts [4]. Here are some examples I picked from the extract.
riony remained in the shade of the portico and thought about the little present she would buy her friend- something delicious to eat, a banana, oranges, Swiss chocolate…, and she thought about food. (p237)
The mental words here are the underlined phrase and word- “thought about” which Ian McEwan used to suggest that Briony is having a complex inner world and complex psychological activities with erratic thoughts, and “delicious” showing that she’s having a happy memory. These are apparently a skill acknowledged to all applied broadly in stream of consciousness.
he became aware of the nervy, fidgeting music behind her the moment it ceased, and in the sudden new measure of silence, which seemed to confer freedom, she decided she must eat breakfast. (p237)
In the second case above, Brony’s memory is getting less relaxed and pleasant, for the music is nervy and fidgeting, just as the feelings she has got right now. her tension is getting even serious as she the meeting with Cecilia is becoming closer.
he turned her back and looked out at the quiet terraced houses in full sunlight, at the way she had come from the High Street. She was surprised to discover that she had no wish to leave yet, even though she was embarrassed by the long kiss, and dreaded what more there was to come. (p251)
The third case here happens after Cecilia pacifying Robbie who was pissed off arguing with Briony. Although “embarrassed” and “dreaded” are not positive adjectives, the embarrassed feelings are fairly described while the inner feeling of relief and joy seeing these two are still madly in love and can live together happily become more prominent with the contrast of the former ones.
Linguistic modality is also called mode. Using different modal verbs such as “might”, “would” and “could” as the classification of propositions according to whether they are contingently true or false, possible, impossible, or necessary. There are several examples listed below:
he decided she must eat breakfast. (p237)
he would not do so until invited, and she would never ask. (p246)
he should feel the need to withstand him. (p250)
Anything that might put his alibi in question. (p252).
If he couldn’t talk, he might have to act. (p250)
It is interesting that in this chapter of the whole novel, “would” is the most frequently used modal verb. The probability of different things decreases from “must”, “would”, “could” to “might”. And the “should” here means doing something unexpectedly.
ynaesthesia is a rhetorical device or figure of speech where one sense is described in terms of another. This may often take the form of a simile. One can distinguish the literary joining of terms derived from the vocabularies of sensory domains from synaesthesia as a neuropsychological phenomenon [5].
Then the creak of a stair, and feet wearing thick socks came into view. (P239)
In this case, what came into Briony’s view was not only visual sense, but also sound sensation of “the creak of a chair”. Outside the house, Briony was impossible to see what is going on inside the house, but she could make a guess by the clues given to her. With series of visual image followed, the synaesthesia makes the image more vividly and stereo, so that we can imagine just how her sister stood up from the chair drowsily and then stepped to the door.
Onomatopoeic words, in brief, is the imitation of natural sounds in word form. They can be the connection, or symbolism, of a sound that is interpreted and reproduced within the context of a language, usually out of mimicry of a sound. Generally speaking, no one can determine the meaning of a word purely by how it sounds. But in onomatopoeic words these sounds are much less arbitrary; they are connected in their imitation of other objects or sounds in nature [6].
Then the creak of a stair, and feet wearing thick socks came into view. (P239)
At last she heard the click of the lock on the bathroom door. (P246)
he showed her ticket and went through into the dirty yellow light, to the head of the clanking, creaking escalator. (p255)
In the cases above, McEwan used several onomatopoeic words to describe the sound of moving a chair, turning the key and the operating of escalators. Vocal sounds in the imitation of natural sounds doesn’t necessarily gain meaning, but can gain symbolic meaning. It creates the environment with us involved to use onomatopoeic words here, so that we can almost hear the sounds happening in the scene.
A numeral is a member of a word class characterized by the designation of numbers [7]. Numerals function most typically as an adjective or a pronoun and express numbers and relations to numbers for example: quantity, sequence, frequency, or fraction. I noticed that the author uses quite a few numerals in scenery deｓｃｒｉｐｔion, and I chose an excerpt below:
The house was silent. Briony’ s view past the open front door was of a stretch of floral lino, and the first seven or eight stairs which were covered in deep red carpet.… The wallpaper was floral too—a posy of three roses alternating with a snowflake design. From the threshold to the beginning of the stairs she counted fifteen roses, sixteen snowflakes. Inauspicious. (p239)
This short paragraph portrays the scenery in front of the house. With these numerals used here, the deｓｃｒｉｐｔions are becoming detailed and realistic. They also indicate how nervous Briony was for she couldn’t help looking around the house and even counting out the exact numbers of those tiny little unimpressive things.
Fuzzy words also called hedgings or imprecise expressions, they are one of the meta- discourse signals in which the writer expresses uncertainty or qualification, which can be also a sign of flashback [8]. There are many sorts of fuzzy words, including adjectives of probability like “rarely”, “sometimes”, “likely” and “probably”, adjectives describing extent such as “almost”, “approximately”, “around” and “nearly”. Modal verbs such as “may”, “might” and “could” are also an important part of fuzzy words. It is interesting that “about” has been found to be the most used fuzzy word according to an investigation carried out by Lou Dubois, the English linguistician, among speeches of a medicine meeting [9]. The following sentences are examples using fuzzy words in Atonement.
The eyes were dark and enlarged, by fatigue perhaps. Or sorrow. (p240)
Cecilia had been about to take a bath. (p242)
On it was a jam jar of blue flowers, harebells perhaps, and a full ashtray, and a pile of books. (p243)
he hesitated, conscious that in answering she would be offering a form of defense, a rationale, and that it might enrage him further. (p249)
In these sentences, we find out that the author favors the word “perhaps” comparing to others. The first one is a deｓｃｒｉｐｔion of Cecilia’s eyes. Briony is observing from the third person point of view. After so many years not seeing each other and so much misery she has suffered, Briony is not sure about her speculating. Maybe fatigue, maybe sad, or maybe both.
The second one is also a guess at Cecilia, which Briony made based on the humid atmosphere, and she is uncertain about her estimation, as well. The rest of examples are using fuzzy word out of almost the same reasons.
Syntactic Rhetoric
In English grammar, end-focus, also know as the Processibility Principle, is the principle which is a normally used characteristic of sentence structure in English, with the most important information in a clause or sentence is placed at the end purposely [10].
This structure is often used to focus the audience’s attention, make place for new information, change intonation or emphasize the information followed. These functions are exemplified as followed.
The eyes were dark and enlarged, by fatigue perhaps. Or sorrow. (p240)
Either you’re in, young lady, or you’re out. (p242)
he feared her sister, and her scorn. (p246)
ut she was not frightened of him, not physically. (p248)
he felt obliterated, expunged from the room, and was relieved. (p250)
What she felt was more like homesickness, though there was no source for it, no home. (p255)
The first two are intended to express a new meaning. Cecilia’s eyes are dark and enlarged more likely due to sorrow, and the landlady wants Briony out more than in.
The third and fourth ones are emphasizing on and making further explanation of her fearing about her sister’s scorn and not physically frightened of Robbie. The penultimate one is a kind of climax, while the last one highlighted that she has no home anymore for the crime she committed.
hort sentences are usually used to be emphatic, and often the presentation of important facts and ideas. Writers also use them to be the force and clarify or vividly describe and make readers feel the extreme tension or characters’ feelings.
labs of ham, poached eggs, the leg of a roast chicken, thick Irish stew, lemon meringue. A cup of tea. (p237)
The eyes were dark and enlarged, by fatigue perhaps. Or sorrow. (p240)
riony wanted to tell her how wonderful it was that Robbie had come back safely. What deliverance. (p246)
hort sentences are a writing feature of Ian McEwan. Seeing the first two, those short sentences are both emphatic, while the last one is a free indirect thought of Briony, aiming to readers feeling the same deliverance just as she does.
arataxis is an arrangement of sentence, clauses, phrases, or words in coordinate rather than subordinate constructions, or words in connectives, or with coordinate conjunctions.[11] As in the following example, McEwan used this technique of parataxis with “and” being the connectives.
He wore army trousers and shirt and polished boots, and his braces hung free at his waist.
Using this kind of technique, readers like me can be able to make our own connections implied by the paratactic syntax. [12]
In rhetoric, an anaphora is a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis. The combination of anaphora and epistrophe results in symploce.
he would not do so until invited, and she would never ask.(p246)
he gave Briony a look, a cool glance to let her know that nothing had changed, nothing had softened. (p242)
In the second example, anaphora has the function of emphasizing Cecilia’s inner feelings, and also implies our readers’ emotions, so that we can be persuaded to the indifferent atmosphere between these two sisters. Other than the function of emphasizing ideas, the use of anaphora as a rhetorical device adds rhythm to the sentences, which making it more pleasurable to read and catchy, just as the former example here.
And the most used rhetorical device here is repletion, which is the simple repeating of a word, a phrase or a whole sentence, within a sentence or a poetical line, with no particular placement of the words, in order to secure emphasis. This is such a common literary device widely used as a figure of speech.
“Don’t call me that!” She repeated in a softer voice, “Please don’t call me that.” (p244)
“Don’t worry about that,” she said soothingly, and in the second or two during which she drew deeply on her cigarette, Briony flinched as her hopes lifted unreally. “Don’t worry,” her sister resumed. “I won’t ever forgive you.” (p244)
othing was, and there was nothing to talk about until Robbie came back. (p246)
These intermittent repetitions strengthening the tone and stressing the emotions of Cecilia, her hate, sorrow, anger and helplessness.
As is acknowledged to all that the dash is a punctuation mark. It has plenty of functions such as connecting symmetric items, in places of parentheses or a colon sometimes and setting off summaries or definitions. Vastly usage of dash marks is a feature throughout the fiction [13].
A decision had been made—without her, it seemed. (p237)
The wallpaper was floral too—a posy of three roses alternating with a snowflake design. (p239)
There was another obvious difference—Cecilia had always spoken to her in a motherly or condescending way. (p240)
He took a step toward her and she shrank back, no longer certain of his harmlessness—if he couldn’t talk, he might have to act. (p250)
The first and the last examples are used for supplementary instruction, and the
Further explanation
Narrative techniques
A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked to make a point rather than to elicit an answer [14].
ut who would believe that？ (p244)
“Have you any idea at all what it’s like inside？” (p248)
“How much growing up do you need to do？” (p249)
These are either intended to start a discussion as is showed the last two, which also emphasizing the tone and the anger in Robbie’s mind, or draw an acknowledgement that readers understand the intended message in the first one that nobody would believe that.
Climax is a figure of speech in which words, phrases, or clauses are arranged in order of increasing importance [15]. Here are the examples.
It took all this time, all this movement, for Briony to realize that he was angry, very angry, and just as she did. (p247)
he had learned the little she knew, the tiny, next-to-nothing scraps that came the way of a trainee nurse, in the safety of the ward and the bedside.(p250)
With several things paralleling makes the final term seem still better or more important by comparison of the initial inferior options. Robbie is getting very angry instead of angry, and what Briony learnt was extremely tiny.
A flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story [16]. Here is a flashback of Briony when leaving her sister and Robbie. It’s warm, sweet, but will never happen again.
he used to speak like that to her sometimes, when Cecilia was sixteen and she was a child of six and things went impossibly wrong. Or in the night, when Cecilia came to rescue her from a nightmare and take her into her own bed. Those were the words she used. Come back. It was only a bad dream. Briony, come back. (p255)
The consecutive similes, metaphors and metonymies can be picturesque.
ince these rhetorical devices are fundamental, I’ll skip the definitions, only to illustrating a little.
Examples of Simile:
The walls were pape red with a design of pale vertical strips, like a boy’s pajamas. (p243)
This narrow room with its stripes like bars contained a history of feeling that no one could imagine. (p245)
As Cecilia gripped him tighter, he twisted his whole body away from her, and they seemed like wrestlers as she reached up and tried to turn his head toward her. (p250)
Here are examples of Metaphor:
The smooth wave rose. (p247)
The hardness in his gaze was new, and the eyes were smaller and narrower, and in the corners were the firm prints of crow’s feet.
Examples of Metonymy are listed below:
riony recognized the tone. Pure Nightingale, for use on difficult patients or tearful students. (p242)
Postmodernist
As a novel of postmodernism, it apparently shows qualities of postmodernism.
First of all, metafiction. The whole novel is a fiction written by Briony, the heroine in this fiction. The fiction explicitly and self- consciously reflects on the procedures of fiction.
econdly, the stream of consciousness, which is a term describing how we experience consciousness as a fluid stream. With the novel full of interior monologues and free indirect discourse, this feature can be easily found.
Also, the shifting of point of view and tense, implies the instability of language. For example, part one, two and three are narrated from the third person POV with past tense. However, the last part is from the first person POV, with present tense. This technique is used through the reveal of the whole process and open ending.
The extract also applying pastiche, which refer to a work that contains a hodgepodge of elements or fragments from different source or influences.
McEwan favors montage as well, the distinctive feature both in the novel and the movie, which does not conform to the authenticity arrangement of events. Repetive montage, psychological montage and parallel montage are the most used kinds.
The creating principles of Intertextuality, the status of all texts as composites or amalgams of other texts, are also basic characteristics of postmodern novels. No text is isolated from others. Some of the plots adapted from Twelfth Night, and roles in Atonement, can also be traced to the source of several novels, including Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf [17].
For Atonement, indeterminacy embodied both in the uncertainty of characteristic and plot. For one thing, Danny Herdman and Jack are two unclear while important characters in the novel. For the other, there are numerous uncertainties in the plots, such as the reason that Briony stands out to indict Robbie for, whether she saw the rapist clearly, etc.
In conclusion, this novel is definitely a masterpiece of modernism.
References
[1] https://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/ian_mcewan_novelist_historian/
[2] Pedot R. Rewriting(s) in Ian McEwan's 'Atonement'[J]. Etudes Anglaises, 2007, 60(2):148-159.
[3] 索玉柱，小说风格笔记[6], 9
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia_(rhetorical_device)
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomatopoeia#Onomatopoeia_in_linguistics
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeral_(linguistics)
[7] 索玉柱，英文小说风格鉴赏，2017, 141.
[8] 张荣建. 英语模糊词浅谈[J]. 语言教育, 1989(6):32-33.
[9] https://www.thoughtco.com/end-focus-sentence-structure-1690593
[10] 索玉柱，英文小说风格鉴赏，2017, 69.
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parataxis
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Usage_2
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax_(rhetoric)
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashback_(narrative)
[16] 李涯. 罪无可赎的后现代文本——论麦克尤恩《赎罪》的解构叙事[J]. 当代文坛, 2012(1):102-104.
[17] 王秀. 《赎罪》中的后现代现实主义分析[D]. 辽宁大学, 2014.
[18] David K. O'Hara. Briony's Being-For: Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan's Atonement[J]. Critique Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2011, 52(1):74-100.