Atonement

When something has gone wrong, justice needs to be done and seen to be done.

Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement examines exactly this same dynamic. The central character, Bryony Tallis, makes a grave mistake as a young child, falsely accusing her sister’s boyfriend of rape, a charge that leads through a prison sentence to untold misery and thwarted hopes. The story is of her attempts to atone for this sin, to find forgiveness. Towards the end of the book comes a reminder of her unresolved guilt and her need for atonement:

All she wanted to do was work then bathe then sleep until it was time to work again. But it was all useless, she knew. Whatever skivvying or humble nursing she did, and however well or hard she did it…She would never undo the damage. She was unforgiveable.

Can such damage be undone? As the title of the novel suggests, through atonement.