Critical Essay: Atonement
Ian McEwan’s Atonement explores the ethics of storytelling. The ethical problem is closely related to the problem of narrative perspective (i.e., the gap between the internal and external viewpoints). For most of the novel, we appear to be in the mode of conventional realism: an omniscient narrator moves freely in and out of the thoughts of the various internal characters. Only much later do we learn that the omniscient narrator is, in fact, one of the internal characters. In a further surprise, we discover that the narrator has lied to us about crucial facts of the story. This discovery forces us to reconsider the story, which now appears to be told from a highly partial and unreliable perspective.
Discuss the ethics of storytelling in Atonement. Is the narrator-protagonist atoning for a crime or obscuring it? How sincere is her act of repentance? How is atonement related to the problem of narrative perspective?
