![]() ![]() This scene also demonstrates the novel’s wider concern with war and its remembrance. Given Briony’s past, it is significant that, here, her lies alleviate rather than create suffering, representing a turning point in Briony’s moral and psychological development. Briony’s response represents both a truth (she does feel love for him) and a deception (it is not romantic, and she is not his beloved). He was a lovely boy who was a long way from his family and he was about to die’ ( Atonement, 309). ![]() When Luc asks, ‘Do you love me?’, the ‘Yes’ with which she responds is delivered with the following explanation: ‘No other reply was possible. This ‘dying scene’, which is also a ‘love scene’, represents a moment in which Briony chooses to play the part of Luc’s remembered sweetheart. I felt that unless I had some sort of eruption of feeling from Briony-I saw it as a love scene, even though it’s a dying scene-there would be something too unreliable about her account of love.’ (John Sutherland, ‘Life was Clearly Too Interesting in the War’, The Guardian, 3 rd January 2002) ‘The central love story does not concern Briony, it concerns her sister and another man. For McEwan, this scene allows him to give a necessary depth to Briony’s character: ![]() In one of his discussions of Atonement, Ian McEwan draws particular attention to the encounter between Nurse Briony Tallis and a young French soldier, Luc Cornet, that takes place in part three of the novel. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |