EMC-Atonement_2020.indd 1 06/05/2020 09:41 Written by Lucy Webster Edited by Andrew McCallum Thanks to Emma Barker for comments and suggestions Cover and graphics: Rebecca Scambler Published on https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/publications English and Media Centre, 18 Compton Terrace, London, N1 2UN © English and Media Centre, 2020

Acknowledgements Extract from the Atonement: The Shooting Script reproduced by kind permission of Christopher Hampton and Casarotto Ramsay & Associates Limited. Indiana University Press for Brian Finney’s article Briony’s Stand against Oblivion: The Making of Fiction in Ian McEwan’s Atonement published in the Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 27, No. 3, Writing Life/Writing Fiction (Winter, 2004) D’Angelo, Kathleen. ‘To Make a Novel’: The Construction of a Critical Readership in Ian McEwan’s Atonement. Studies in the Novel 41:1 (2009), 88-105. © 2009 the University of North Texas. Reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press Extracts from ‘The manipulations of Ian McEwan’ by James Wood (© London Review of Books, Vol 31, No. 8, April 2009) reprinted by kind permission of the London Review of Books Extract from The Go-between by © 1953 L. P. Hartley published by Hamish Hamilton 1953, Penguin 1958, 1997. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. © 2000 The Random House Group for permission to reproduce an extract from © Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird The extract from Catcher in the Rye is deemed to fall under fair usage as accepted by the publisher (Hatchette Book Group US https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/about/faqs/#copyright) and defined by the US copyright office fair use page https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html

Download licence Permission is granted to reproduce this download publication for personal and educational use within the purchasing institution (including its Virtual Learning Environments and intranet). Redistribution beyond the institution by any means, including electronic, will constitute an infringement of copyright.

Exploring Atonement – EMC Approaches © English & Media Centre, 2020

EMC-Atonement_2020.indd 2 06/05/2020 09:41 Contents ࢝ Using this Resource 2 Before Reading 3

࢝ Ian McEwan – What Sort of Novelist Is He? 4 ࢝ Cooking Up a New McEwan 9 ࢝ Establishing an Agenda for Atonement 10 Reading the Novel 13

Reading Part 1 14

࢝ After Reading Chapters 2 to 4 16 ࢝ After Reading Chapters 5 to 8 19 ࢝ After Reading Chapters 9 to 12 19 ࢝ After Reading Chapters 13-14 20 Reading Part 2 22

࢝ A Close Focus on the Opening of Part 2 22 ࢝ Reading Part 2 22 ࢝ After Reading Part 2 22 ࢝ Expectations of Part 3 23 Reading Part 3 24

࢝ Reading Aloud to Capture the Style 24 ࢝ Reading Part 3 25 ࢝ After Reading Part 3 25 Reading Part 4 28 After Reading 29

࢝ Getting the Big Picture 30 ࢝ Narrative Voice and Perspective 33 ࢝ Character and Characterisation 36 ࢝ Themes 38 ࢝ Structure, Plot and the Handling of Time 47 ࢝ Genre and Intertextuality 55 ࢝ Literary Crime and What It Means to Read Atonement in this Context 60 ࢝ Style – Critical and Creative Explorations 66 ࢝ Exploring the Novel Through the Lens of the Film Adaptation 68 ࢝ A Realist Narrative, An Experimental Narrative? Both? 73 ࢝ Interviewed in Role as Ian McEwan 77

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EMC-Atonement_2020.indd 1 06/05/2020 09:41 Using this Resource The activities in before and during reading assume that the novel has not yet been read. Before Reading activities such as ‘Cooking Up a New McEwan’ (page 9) ask students to engage creatively with possible ways the novel might develop while others such as ‘Ian McEwan – What Sort of Novelist Is He?’ (page 4) encourage critical engagement. There are light-touch activities to support the reading of Atonement. Reading Part 1 is divided into five chunks, with activities on key aspects of the chapters they’ve just read. You might decide to hold over some of these chapter specific activities until students have read the whole novel. With Parts 2 and 3 of the novel, students are asked to explore the opening sections together before going away to read the rest of the section. The activities in After Reading explore Atonement both in terms of its different narrative aspects and in relation to different literary types, genres and contexts. A wide range of criticism is integrated throughout the material and includes extracts from reviews and academic articles and a selection of articles originally published in emagazine.

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EMC-Atonement_2020.indd 2 06/05/2020 09:41 Eight beginnings from 1978 to 2016 The eight extracts on pages 6-8 are all opening paragraphs of novels by Ian McEwan. They have each been printed alongside one of the book’s covers. Share these out so that, working in pairs, you are each responsible for four of them.

❚ Read your four beginnings and share your first response to them. Do you notice any similarities between them in terms of their content, style, tone (for example, a tension between the ordinary and the strange)? Is there anything that strikes you about the cover and the expectations it creates of the novel? What do you think of them as openings to novels? Would you read on?

❚ Join up with another pair and take it in turns to share what you have noticed about your beginnings and any questions you have.

❚ As a class, take it in turns to feedback what you have noticed. Work together to highlight:

࢝ Ideas, subjects or themes that keep cropping up ࢝ Anything that seems characteristic of McEwan’s style of writing ࢝ Anything that makes a particular opening a bit different from the others.

❚ Early in his career, a number of reviewers dubbed McEwan ‘Ian Macabre’. On the basis of what you have discovered about his work so far, what do you think of this as a nickname?

Exploring further

❚ If you are able to, in your own time, explore the ways in which McEwan begins his other novels and short story collections published between 1975 and 2019, using online tools such as Google Books and Amazon’s ‘Look inside’: − Machines Like Me (2019) − The Children Act (2014) − Solar (2010) − Amsterdam (1998) − The Innocent (1990) − The Comfort of Strangers (1981) − In Between the Sheets (1978) – a collection of short stories − First Love, Last Rites (1975) – a collection of short stories

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EMC-Atonement_2020.indd 5 06/05/2020 09:41 READING PART 1 Exploring the opening

❚ After reading Chapter 1 work in pairs to share your first impressions. Then go on to explore it more critically, thinking about how it works as the opening chapter of a long novel, for example:

࢝ The type of opening it is

࢝ The ways in which the fictional world is created

࢝ Your impressions of the setting and atmosphere and how this is created

࢝ Story and plot: what is the story? ● What do you think might happen? What hints or clues does the narrator give the reader about what is to unfold?

࢝ Narrative voice and point of view ● How would you describe the narrative voice? ● The points of view from which we see the action changes during this chapter. Can you identify these shifts? How are they signalled to the reader?

࢝ Themes: ● What big ideas (themes) seem to you important in this chapter (for example, the hopes and frustrations of childhood, ambition, innocence, family)?

࢝ Style

● How would you describe the style of this chapter – the way it is written? Try to capture your thoughts in 4 or 5 adjectives.

࢝ Anything else?

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EMC-Atonement_2020.indd 14 06/05/2020 09:41 After Reading Chapters 5 to 8 Acting, seeing, interpreting In Chapters 5-8, the following aspects of the text are all important:

࢝ Seeing and being seen ࢝ Interpretation and misinterpretation ࢝ Acting ࢝ Distorted vision ࢝ Different and shifting perspectives.

❚ In pairs, talk briefly about the significance of these ideas in the narrative so far.

❚ Look back into Chapters 5 to 8 and find a quotation that illustrates each of these aspects of the text. Share your findings in class discussion, looking for connections and patterns across the quotations.

After Reading Chapters 9 to 12 A building storm? Throughout these chapters, McEwan develops a sense of unease and foreboding.

❚ Working in twos or threes, challenge each other to find an examples of the different ways he does this, chosen at random from the list below.

1. Secrets and lies 9. Narrative shifts and use of cliffhangers, to leave the reader 2. Threat of revelation suspended

3. Clash between a character’s 10. Shifting points of view, revealing perception and reality conflicting values, views and so on

4. Conflicts between characters 11. The intrusion of powerful emotions – 5. The impact of the past jealousy, resentment, desire

6. The use of the weather to create an 12. Wider references to the developing atmosphere of oppression political tensions

7. Tension between appearance and 13. Imagery associated with reality imprisonment

8. Tension between a character’s 14. Imagery associated with oppression imagined world and the real world of 15. Narrative foreshadowing the novel

The end of Chapter 12 Chapter 12 ends with Emily’s point of view: ‘all her terror concentrated on the simple fact that he wanted her seated before he broke the news’

❚ In pairs, discuss what you think has happened, finding evidence from the novel to back up your ideas. Do you think this is the point to which McEwan has been leading the reader?

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EMC-Atonement_2020.indd 19 06/05/2020 09:41 Getting the Big Picture Aboutness… Atonement is an absorbing page-turner – but it is also complex and often destabilising. Before going on to explore it in more detail, use the following strategy to capture a big picture of what you think the novel is about.

❚ On your own, spend ten minutes writing freely about the novel and your response to it.

❚ Now try to crystallise your overarching view of Atonement into a single sentence. Keep hold of this sentence – it will form a useful context for your more detailed explorations of the novel. You might find it helpful to use the following structure, but shouldn’t feel restricted by it:

࢝ ‘Atonement is about …’ ࢝ Now continue your sentence by adding ‘and …’ (something which adds to the first point) ࢝ Finally continue your sentence with ‘but/although/even though’ (something which qualifies, complicates or nuances your first two points).

❚ Take it in turn to read your ‘aboutness’ sentences’, listening out for the similarities and differences in what you have each chosen to emphasise. Display these sentences as a context for your further explorations. The significance of the title Briony’s first draft novel (the one she sent to ‘CC’) was called ‘Two characters by the fountain’. ‘Atonement’ seems to be both Briony’s title of her final draft (Parts 1-3) and the ‘real’ author Ian McEwan’s title for his whole novel (Parts 1-3 plus the appendix). Here is a reminder of the dictionary definition of ‘atonement’. 1. The action of making amends for a wrong or injury. 2. (In religious contexts) reparation or expiation for sin.

❚ In pairs, share your thoughts on how suitable ‘atonement’ is as a title for the novel. What aspects does it foreground? What does it marginalise?

❚ What title do you imagine Robbie might have given to this novel? What about Cecilia? What title would you give it? Share your ideas in small groups, then as a class.

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EMC-Atonement_2020.indd 30 06/05/2020 09:41 Ten snippet reviews Included below are some of the different ways in which critics and readers have summed up the novel.

❚ In pairs or threes, discuss each snippet, exploring how far it:

࢝ Reflects your view of the novel ࢝ Offers you a new angle on it that you find convincing ࢝ Presents a view which sits uneasily with your interpretation or which you would like to challenge.

McEwan expertly weaves together a taut, compelling narrative that is as much concerned with the making of fiction as it is with the nature of love, guilt and forgiveness. Flyleaf, Everyman edition (2014)

Utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, the novel is at its centre a profound – and profoundly moving – exploration of shame and forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution. Blurb, Penguin Random House edition (2001)

Among other things a novel about the nature of storytelling. Charles McGrath, New York Times review of the film (2007)

Atonement straddles periods and genres to stage what McEwan has called his conscious ‘attempt’ on behalf of post-millennial fiction ‘to discuss where we stand’. David James, ‘Narrative Artifice’ in The Cambridge Companion to Ian McEwan (2019)

An exploration of what novels do, and of the question it poses about whether fiction can get close to ‘the truth’ […] Maria Margaronis, ‘The Age of Authenticity: Writing Historical Fiction at the End of the Twentieth Century’ in History Workshop Journal (2008)

A profoundly moving exploration of shame and forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution. Penguin Random House Reading Guide

The novel, supposedly a narrative constructed by one of the characters, stands as a sophisticated rumination on the hazards of fantasy and the chasm between reality and art. Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times (2002)

A tale of concealed passions and resentments. John Mullan, Guardian (2003)

Atonement is the story of a single, tragic error: an error on the part of someone who is almost, but not quite, too young to know what she is doing. Peter Bradshaw reviewing the film, directed by Joe Wright, Guardian (2007)

The novel combines a complex narrative structure – in which the interior revelations are minutely detailed – with a compelling storyline. Dominic Head: Contemporary British Novelists – Ian McEwan (2008)

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