Cecilia's Depiction In The Atonement

Sheri L. Dew once said: “Our responsibility is to learn to draw upon the power of the Atonement. Otherwise, we walk through mortality relying solely on our own strength.” In the film Atonement, Briony Tallis changed the course of many lives through the false stories she told as she accuses Robbie, her older sister’s lover, of a crime that he did not commit. As Briony got older, she started to reflect on her foolish actions and started to take responsibility for the impact her decisions had on Robbie’s and her sister Cecilia’s life. Until an individual can successfully reflect on their actions and take responsibility for others, they will struggle with their self-identity because of the overwhelming guilt felt from their actions.

Initially, when an individual is in a position of power where they can take responsibility for the actions of others, their understanding of things may be incorrect, which can cause a negative outcome for others and a struggle with self-identity. Briony was a controlling figure with high authority over people because of her military-like character and perceived things through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old. When Cecilia and Robbie were in a library together, she misunderstood the events that played out. Briony perceived that Robbie was a “sex maniac” and was harming Cecilia, but she did not see the love between them. Due to Briony’s perception of adult matter, this led her to struggle with taking responsibility for the actions she saw. Because of this, she did not want to tell anybody about the events that had happened, but she also wanted to speak up because of the power in her words, which caused a conflict with her identity as a coward and an identity as a person in power. However, the misunderstanding of events can cause an individual to learn about the importance of power, which may lead to incorrect decisions. When twins that were visiting Briony’s residence went missing, the whole house went to go search for them, which led to Briony seeing Lola, the sister of the twins, being raped by someone. She saw the attacker as Paul Marshal, her brother’s friend, but due to her perception of Robbie, she incorrectly accused him of rape. These events were crucial to Briony's identity development because this showed how confident she felt about her understanding of the events that occurred, but her understanding of the events were incorrect, which ultimately led to a negative outcome for Robbie. This also shows the success with how Briony attempted responsibility for Cecilia by trying to protect her, but she never accounted for her feelings. Because of Briony’s power and her confidence with her self-identity, she never saw how this would affect the couple’s relationship and ultimately their lives in the future.

Consequently, when an individual matures, they will start to realize the extent of the incorrect actions from the past and will start to atone for their mistakes. When Briony turned eighteen, she started to mature and reflected on her decision to accuse Robbie, and wanted to take responsibility for her actions. Briony decided to pursue nursing as a way to escape from her family and her past. When the head nurse states that “There is no Briony! [She] [is] Tallis. Nurse Tallis,” this somewhat erases her past life, turning from Briony Tallis into Nurse Tallis, someone without a name and someone without any power or worth, which resulted in Briony’s identity being stripped from her. She is restricted to a life of rules, obedience and housework, which was very different from Briony’s lifestyle at age thirteen. Briony is aware that her endeavors as medical caretaker were to some way or another make up for what she did to Robbie. But, due to the arrival of horribly injured men that she is expected to treat consistently, it brings her face to face with real suffering and death and she now realizes that she can never reverse what has been done, and whatever is left unforgiven will never heal. Because of this, she now realizes the irreversible extent of her actions of the past through her gruesome work at the hospital, and because she now knows what real suffering feels like, she starts to atone for Robbie and Cecilia by feeling guilty and realizing her mistakes as an innocent young child. The realization of the extent of incorrect actions from the past is also shown as an individual experiences events that can allude to their past actions. As Briony worked at the hospital, she is greeted with a dying soldier named Luc Cornet, who suffers a brain injury that caused him to incorrectly see Briony as his lover. Luc is in distress due to his injuries and Briony does her best to comfort the dying soldier through her words. This caused her to feel what love is and that she can tell lies to comfort people, which shows the gain of power in this moment over someone that is in a weaker class, which alludes to Briony having power over Robbie as a thirteen-year-old. As these events play out, she realizes the extent of her lies told about Robbie, which caused her to want to take responsibility for her foolish actions and perceptions as a thirteen-year-old. Due to the guilt felt by Briony in this scene, she struggles with her self-identity because she feels as if she had abused her power too much in the past, and she feels conflicted with her level of power before and her level of power in the future.

Ultimately, as an individual starts to accept the truth of their identity, they attempt to resolve the conflict with their identity and they start to take responsibility for their actions and create solutions or compromises for previous actions. When Briony pursued her passion as a story writer and wrote her final story as a seventy-seven-year-old, she felt that the truth needed to be revealed and felt she needed to provide Robbie and Cecilia their happiness in the novel she wrote about the events that occurred between them. In an interview about her novel, Briony started to reveal how much harm she caused to Robbie and Cecilia, as she revealed that the scene in her book of Robbie and Cecilia happily together at their cottage was fictional and revealed the tragic death of the two. She stated that “[Cecilia] and Robbie never had the time together they both so longed for and deserved, which, ever since, [she’s]...always felt [she] prevented.” This shows how Briony shaped the events leading up to the couple’s death through the actions of the past and how her sense of control caused her to be able to manipulate events. This also indicates the power of her lies, as she provides them the ending they deserve in her novel, but in reality, they never got to see each other again. Therefore, she successfully takes responsibility for her actions and creates solutions to her problems through her novel because of the remorse felt by the truth of her identity which caused the death of Robbie and Cecilia, and it ultimately shaped her identity because she feels the extent of the control she had on their lives and feels confident with telling the truth, disregarding the cowardliness of telling the truth in the past.