The Tallis sisters are as different as one can expect through such a large age gap: Cecilia, the wallflower, and Briony, the easily influenced dreamer. Connected only in family and seemingly nothing else, the sister’s vary in the interests, tidiness, and taste, or lack of taste, in men.

Both stubborn and hardheaded, however, they are set in their ways.

Through Emily’s eyes, Cecelia “…had no job or skill and still a husband to find and motherhood to confront…” (62). A woman ahead of her time, Cecelia seemed to have her head in the clouds, refusing to be stuck in the same situation as her mother. The typical Victorian era lifestyle would not please her. The boring everyday tasks would not entertain her desire for adventure. Indecisive in even the most simple of tasks, Cecelia changed her dress three times before the faithful dinner party that would determine her future.

Impulsive and erratic in her behavior, she flung herself into the fountain, “…drowning herself would be [Robbie’s] punishment” (29). Rather than thinking her actions through, Cecelia just acts. She does not write, nor speak, she just responds. She loves and lives freely, unbound by society.

Rather than live her own adventure tale, the youngest Tallis, Briony, would rather write. Emily described her as “…the softest little thing…to love her was to be soothed” (62). Rather than the delicate flower that her mother describes, the audience sees an unsavory character in Briony. Perhaps a situation of age, we see an immature girl allow the thoughts of others to poison her judgment and cause the downfall of two beloved characters.

A dreamer and a writer, the notion that “…reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing” seemed a mantra by which Briony lived (35). Everything taken a face value, Robbie’s explicit use of a word and actions beyond Briony’s wildest imagination must make his a maniac. Black and white, rather than grey, there were only two sides to the stories the Briony would tell. Fair, because her age does not allow her the life expertise that would enable her to fill in her world with color.

Sisters are different. In no world would we assume them to have the same thoughts, ideals, and values. We can assume however, for this novel, that this tension between the two and the actions of the younger will have drastic consequences.

Cecilia and Briony are perhaps more similar than they are different. Deep down, the two of them desire to be needed. They want to be helpful, want to meet people’s needs without being asked, but, in their lack of straightforward communication, miss out on actually meeting people’s needs.

When it comes to the twins, their younger cousins, both sisters more or less “miss the mark” in intuiting the real need. For example, when the twins and Lola first arrive at the Tallis household, Cecilia and Emily attempt to make up for Briony’s brusqueness with boring and bland activities. While Briony considers this more oppressive than her aggression in recruiting them for the play, Emily and Cecilia assume that relaxation is what the twins need the most. After panning out from these focalizations, however, the third person objectively asserts that “it was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone” (9). In their attempts to help the twins, McEwan seems to reveal their “help” to be merely reflections of what they themselves would have wanted.

When Cecilia and Briony’s desire to meet needs comes to one another, they seem to be unaware of the other’s growth and change, assuming that the other is still the same as when growing up. Cecilia particularly expresses a desire to coddle and soothe Briony, keeping Briony the baby sister. She notes having seen herself affect change in her sister before, but is frustrated that it isn’t working now and that even used to help her perhaps more than help Briony “addressing Briony’s problems with kind words and caresses would have restored a sense of control” (41). She seems to think that coddling Briony is the best thing for her, refusing to acknowledge Briony’s maturation and growth. In doing so, she doesn’t acknowledge Briony’s good qualities or her bad qualities, thus stunting her growth as an individual.

On Briony’s side, her “help” to her sister shows a lack of understanding about her sister. She is so caught up in Cecilia’s helplessness that she cannot see past any evidence that would prove otherwise. Her survey of Cecilia’s messy room simply confirms what she already believes about Cecilia and about her self-imposed role as mother #2 to a capable college graduate. She critiques the messiness, unable to understand the disorder, saying that “Cecilia might have been ten years older, but there really was something quite hopeless and helpless about her” (166). Briony’s perception of Cecilia allows her (Briony) to enter into the adult world and adult feelings, as she so wants to do.

The problem here is communication, or rather, lack thereof. Each sister sees the other as a child, someone to be taken care of, while each sees herself as the caretaker. Perhaps this is the nature of all sibling relationships; I know that I sometimes feel like I need to “take care” of my older brother and I’m sure he looks often looks at me as someone to protect. McEwan’s presentation of this relationship highlights the self-centeredness of both Briony and Cecilia’s need to help others and one another, showing the reader an unhealthy amount of self-interest within a relationship. Though it might have been present before, altruism is lacking in Cecilia and Briony’s giving and they are thus unable to adequately meet others’ needs

When reading a novel, readers make decisions about a book after the first few chapters. They usually finish intriguing stories, but if the book has sparked little interest, readers may put it down to start another one. Unfortunately, we have an impatient generation that wants instant results – people want a book that quickly pulls them in from page one. What’s not realized is that many wonderful stories pick up pace later in novels. Ian McEwan’s Atonement is a wonderful example of this.

The beginning of this story is very slow. When I read the first portion of class reading, I was interested but not amazed. All that happens is a bossy girl, Briony, directs a self-written play and orders other kids around. Then, Briony sees her older sister and a boy in a private scene. It is a good and steady read, but nothing too exciting happens, primarily because conflict hasn’t been introduced yet. After the first portion though, the story’s pace immediately changes. I believe the pace picks up with the introduction of the conflict – Robbie and Cecelia’s relationship, which Briony doesn’t approve of. She reads the letter that Robbie wrote to Cecelia and catches the two of them together another day. A young teenager, Briony is uneasy watching their relationship, so readers are anxious to see what she is going to do. She eventually has Robbie arrested because she thinks that he has been involved in rape.

What a significant plot change from Chapter One to Chapter Fourteen.

Atonement is a strong example proving the direct relationship between pace and conflict. When conflict is introduced, people want to know what happens, and plot tends to move more quickly. In this story (like many others), readers just have to give the book a little time because conflict isn’t shown immediately.  Overall though, their patience is rewarded, and readers who keep reading get to dive into an incredible novel.

This novel has gotten to be so fast paced I’m having a really hard time putting it down! McEwan really likes his cliff-hanging chapter endings, which is both thrilling and crazy annoying. Changing the focalization for almost every chapter change makes the reader wish that just once we could get the whole story before he starts telling us about something else.

I often found myself skimming over the writing just to find out what happened next, especially after Briony caught Robbie and Cecilia in the library, and when Briony found Lola on the island. My roommates looked over at me in concern during these parts of my reading, when I told Briony, “Ughhh Briony no don’t do it, you have no idea what you’re talking about, you’re just going to ruin everything, come on please just use some common sense for once!”

After finishing Chapter 10, I just want to see if Briony runs down the stairs to tell everyone that Robbie attacked Cecilia. I highly doubt I’m alone in my fierce desire to skip any sort of description at the beginning of Chapter 11. It seems a very odd way to begin the chapter following the crisis of Briony’s discovery, “Despite the late addition of chopped fresh mint to a blend of melted chocolate…” What? Why are you telling me this? What happens next?!

Clearly McEwan is trying to slow us down. He takes the time to set the stage, as Emily arranges the guests at the table. A similar episode occurs after Briony discovers Lola on the island, where McEwan forces us to slow down as Briony waits in the house for people to respond to her accusation.

These passages in Chapter 13 and 14 are different in that for once McEwan does not change the focalization between chapters. Why isn’t the narration focalized through Lola the victim, or Robbie the accused? This is a curious decision to me, and one I feel I do not fully understand from the reading so far. It’s certainly an interesting technique to  to change the pace of the novel by changing the focalization, and something to pay attention to in the remainder of the novel.

Pace can be defined as how fast the author is allowing the reader to move through the story. Throughout the text the story tends to drag on, mainly due to the fact that we see the same events multiple times, and while it may give the reader a greater understanding of each character, it takes a lot of time to keep retelling story segments.

For right now the story can allow such a slow pace because it is trying to let the reader get to know everyone, but once conflict is introduced, the pace speeds up. Conflict requires a lot of action and if it went too slow it would not feel right. If it went too slow, maybe the characters could rationalize a way to avoid such conflict, but in most conflicts tempers and emotions rise and conflict is propelled through the text. This is perfect for Briony, who wants to narrate everything and be in control. It is like in this moment her story is the only one that seems to be believed. The conflict at this point is none other than Briony’s misinterpretation of events going on around her. She is easily convinced, and she is set in her convictions, that Robbie is a maniac. It did not take much to convince after at all, just a comment really.  She is in control of this situation and she could not be having a better time.

This would be an internal conflict as this deals with Briony’s mind and how she sees the world. Later she makes it external by giving a voice to the crazy story inside of her head, but its roots are buried within her mind.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is different from other novels. The main character’s first few words, “I am a sick man,” raise reader interest, leaving people curious (17). How could a man be sick already? Why is he so upfront? Is he exaggerating? Even though I had these questions right as I started reading, I didn’t find answers until I completely finished the book. This is mainly because Notes from Underground is broken into two parts, and readers need both to understand everything. The first conveys the character’s emotions; the second tells his story. Overall, it is important for readers to consider the relationship between the two parts to have the richest reading experience.

The first and second parts are interrelated. However, when I started to read the book, I was really confused. Part One quickly reveals that the main character is rude, angry, and selfish, but it never explains how he became this way. Since there isn’t much plot given in Part One, our focus on the harsh discourse. For example, at the beginning, he reflects, “I couldn’t manage to be anything at all: neither spiteful, nor kind; neither a scoundrel, nor an honest man; neither a hero, nor an insect” (18). Immediately, readers sense his bitterness. Why does the protagonist feel this way? We find out in Part Two that he has failed in his relationships, and he is without friends or a companion. When thinking about his so-called friends, he realizes that “Trudoliubov would glare at me…Ferfichkin would snicker at me” (73).  With such knowledge, the bitter attitude makes a little more sense.  Readers must finish Part Two to completely understand Part One.

If we just look at Part One, we find a bitter man’s empty thoughts. If we just look at Part Two, we find a normal, neutral story.  Analyzing the two parts together is the most beneficial way to study the novel. I think that the two parts reflect the character – broken. He is so bitter about his past that he has never fully healed. Likewise, the story is presented in broken segments. In Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, the “what happened” in Part Two is just as valuable the thoughts and emotions in Part One.

“I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.” Who is this “Underground Man?” Do these descriptions lend to the supposed reliability of him as a narrator?…as a character? Do we as readers feel obligated to trust a man whose very description of himself lends us to despise him?

The Underground man is a fully developed character, one that I would claim to be round. His complexity engages readers and causes debates over his varied and conflicting motives…despite an often inability to understand how his “sick” mind works. Forever contradicting himself and stumbling over his own notions of humanity, the Underground man claims, “…I will tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is a illness—a real thorough-going illness.” Is the Underground Man too aware? Too conscious? But how can such a learned and conscious man exist in such a pitiful place? Perhaps his consciousness does in fact act as an illness upon his life and his thinking patterns.

While round in his complexity, the Underground Man remains static in his development throughout the novel. We see a depressed man. An angry man. A man with pointless rage. “We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better.” But he does not change. He is as he claim humanity is: stillborn; unable to grow. While there is a glimmer of hope in his dealings with Liza, he remains forever our unlikeable, stagnant Underground Man.

As a character, we see certain attributes, but as a narrator, what do we notice? Is he reliable in his self-deprecation? Is he honest in his retellings? Do we trust the Underground Man? Or do we trust our guts and disregard him as an angry civil servant, stuck in a loop of despair?

I find his blatant explanations to be honest. Both part 1 and 2 coincide in feeling and emotion, creating a fairly understandable and comprehensible explanation of who the Underground Man might be. Despite his unpleasantness and his seemingly insane rants, we can find truth is his descriptions. For, after all, his descriptions are simply his understanding of the world and of himself. They are the descriptions of the truths in his mind, and his mind only.