Describing Briony Tallis

Briony is the youngest of the three children of the Tallis Family although she called herself an only child due to the age difference between her and her siblings. She has a passion for writing and a need for perfection. As a child she is very self-centered. She thinks that the world revolves around her and that she understands everything that she sees even though she really doesn’t. This misunderstanding is the basis of the entire plot of Atonement. Briony witnesses a series of events (fountain scene, letter, library, forest) that cause her to believe that Robbie raped Lola. In actuality she misinterpreted everything she saw and accused the wrong person of rape. This resulted in Robbie going to jail, Cecilia disowning her family, and Robbie and Cecilia never being able to see each other again before they both die in the war. Once Briony realizes the gravity of what she has done she tries to atone for her ‘sins’. In the novel she does this by leaving her family to become a nurse (just like Cecilia) and tries to write to Cecilia and get her to talk to her to no avail. She ends up going to see Cecilia at her house and Robbie is there. She explains herself to both of them and they tell her what she can do to ‘atone’. However none of that actually happened, Robbie and Cecilia died before they could see each other again and Briony never talked to either of them after the incident. What Briony does to ‘atone’ instead is write the book which is parts one two and three of the Atonement. She believes that in making ‘her’ lovers live and telling the world that she has done something wrong that she will be forgiven and everything will be okay. There are a few turning point throughout the novel in which you see different parts of Briony’s character. One big point that is made is when Briony question if everyone is really as ‘alive’ as she is but the first big part is when she stops the play and goes to break nettles in the forest because it’s not perfect; this is a perfect example of her need for perfection and her frustration with everyone else who isn’t ‘perfect’. Another part of her character is shown in the fact that she thinks she’s ‘protecting’ her sister from a ‘maniac’ when in fact she was just ruining them. This is an example of her need to control everything and the fact that she thinks she’s right about everything no matter what. A different component of her character is shown when she describes becoming a nurse. This part shows that she has grow in the past years and that she is not as self-centered anymore but it also shows that she still has the need for perfection when she’s trying to make the wounded soldiers follow procedure. The last major advancement we see in Briony’s character is when she is talking to the French boy Luc. Here she learns a lot about not only herself but she realizes the severity of war and he makes Briony think about other people’s lives for the first time in a sincere way. Briony’s character is the one that is most advanced throughout the book but this is partly because at the beginning of the book she was much younger than everyone else in the book and started off a lot more naïve and immature. Also, at the end of the book she is elderly and has been diagnosed with dementia which is the reason that she decided to write Atonement in the first place. She didn’t want to forget without ‘atoning’ first and I think that says a lot about her character. Another thing to keep I mind is the fact that Briony wrote the entire book in order to ‘atone’ for what she did. We don’t know how much of Briony we can believe because she might have had an agenda in writing the book. Because of this, it is difficult to know if what she says is true. It’s hard to know what part of what’s written is truth and what part is her portraying herself in a way that would make the reader want to forgive her for what she did. As a whole, Briony’s character grew with the story and helped advance its plot because without her, there would be no misunderstanding.