Character Names in Atonement

Okay you guys, I hope you won't mind another short entry from me. While reading Atonement, I got to thinking about whether or not the character's names had any significance. I wondered about the name Briony-- I felt as though I remembered it as not only a name, but a plant as well. Recalling how significant name meanings are in Jumpha Lahiri's work, and how every element of a writer's work is used to convey a meaning, I looked up her name, and then out of curiosity, looked up some of the other names of Atonement's main characters. Here is what I found:

The girl's name Briony \b-rio-ny\is a variant of Bryony (Greek), and the meaning of Briony is "climbing plant". Perhaps her name is indicative of her ambition, and also her self importance-- how she put herself before others. (Climbing plants, such as ivy, often smother other plants for their own welfare.)

Ce-ci-lia is of Latin origin, and its meaning is "blind one". Which is interesting, because she herself admits in a foreshadowing early on that she will be a victim of a fate which she cannot yet see.

The boy's name Robert is of Old German origin, and its meaning is "bright fame". This might be a stretch, but since he is ambitious, seeks to climb out of his lower caste, make something of himself and move up in the world, I think it is fitting of his character.

Again, maybe I am stretching it a little, but I was surprised by how fitting what I found was. Once more, I am amazed at how meticulously crafted literature is. It is full of literary devices that usually go over my head at first glance. Learning how to identify them has really increased my appreciation for writers and their work.

The bryony plant, Briony's namesake. A harmful, climbing plant. ...Hmm.

Understanding and Forgiveness (Section G) 3/18/2010

The most striking theme of the book so far has been the question of forgiveness. The first time this appears is when Briony is watching out the window. She sees Cecilia and Robbie have an interaction that she cannot hear as Robbie is arrested.
“It seemed a kindly gesture, and Briony was touched by her sister’s capacity for forgiveness, if that was what it was. Forgiveness. The word had never meant a thing before...” This scene is the second time Briony misinterprets a situation s she watches it out of the window, and the paralleled situation highlights the foreshadowing in the first scene.
“The ordinary people that she knew, and what power one could have over the other, and how easy it was to get everything wrong, completely wrong.”
Together the two scenes illustrate one central irony of Atonement. Briony sees the situation incorrectly and does not understand until later that she is the one who needs to ask forgiveness. Briony’s misunderstanding leads to the question how much understanding is necessary for betrayal and in opposite, for forgiveness. Interestingly while Briony sees turning in Robbie as a kind of new maturity, it is her youth which keeps her from understanding the situation, and drives her to tell the police officers that Robbie was the rapist.
The question is brought up again when Briony sends Cecilia a letter saying that she knows that she was wrong, and that she wants to help Robbie. When Cecilia writes to Robbie about this he recognizes that he does not forgive Briony. He knows that it is irrational to blame her for what happened because she didn’t understand, but he feels that she is only trying to help him out of guilt. “Here she was, offering a possibility of absolution. But it was not for him. He had done nothing wrong. It was for herself, for her own crime, which her conscience could not longer bear.”
At the same time he encourages Cecilia to reunite with her family. He does not want her to forgive her family, he simply wants her to reconnect with them to assuage his own guilt. “He would never forgive himself if he did not encourage her [to connect with her family].”
Atonement keeps returning to this idea of forgiveness and whether understanding necessary to forgive. Each of the characters feels that the characters want to be forgiven for their own wrong doings, but they do not want to have to come to peace with the acts beforehand.
One of the biggest hurdles in the book is that Briony did not understand her crime when she committed it. After she grows up she comes to understand, but the version of Briony who committed the crime never understood the situation well enough to be sorry for it. How could she be forgiven for an act that she committed believing it was the right thing to do to protect her sister?

Briony as a modern manifestation of old-fashioned morality (G) 3/15/2010

Precocious little girls often spell doom. Nabokov most famously penned the “nymphet” archetype in Lolita, with the fanatically pedophilic main character describing one girl as “the deadly little demon among the wholesome children.” While Lolita describes a girl who is sexually precocious while being still that, an immature girl, Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement is centered upon a thirteen-year old girl obsessed with morality, order, and ideals. Briony Tallis is thusfar a fascinating character, unlike any I’ve seen in literature before. Her linguistic intelligence is evident in the tales she writes, short stories and plays littered with large, albeit misused words, and her prolific output either indicates an innate talent for writing or her fascination with creating perfect romance. The Trials of Arabella might seem hilariously infantile, but the play shares roots with the morality plays of the Church during the Dark Ages of Europe. As someone who had to sit through theatre history in the eleventh grade, I was surprised to see such a blatant parallelism between Briony’s play and, say, Everyman. Pageant plays, as they were called, were tautological, didactic affairs where you literally had the Hell scared out of you. The Trials of Arabella follows Arabella as she first chooses to be with a “wicked man”, and then punishes her for running away from her family. Arabella is only rewarded with true love after making the correct decision of man. (3) Briony’s moral compass doesn’t seem to come from the adults around her, making it all the more odd that she would have such a specific and fierce sense of justice. In fact, Briony does not seem to fit in much at all. Her room is a shrine to organization, the only one on the top floor. (5) She shows disinterest in her surroundings and adult problems, such as the divorce of her cousin’s parents. This sense of detachment towards what should be another juicy morality play is interesting and places her attention solely toward stories of her own construction.

In lieu of having her own problems and secrets, Briony creates flawed characters and rules their fate based on repentance. (5) Verdicts in Arabella change after the main character repents; she finds true love only when she realizes her mistake. While this is jumping ahead, one might compare Arabella to Briony’s generic version of Cee, seeming to foreshadow what is to happen. The headstrong daughter has flirtations with a questionable man and runs off with him. Perhaps this is Briony’s prediction of Cee’s behavior; although the play is written for her brother Leon’s homecoming, Cecilia will be sure to attend a small family affair like this. Briony, in her childish fantasy, controls the wayward sister to make everyone else happy- restoring family balance and giving everyone a happy ending. Her tales are really like classic fairy tales in that they warn listeners to behave a certain way and are rather extreme about doing so. This takes place in the early 20th century, long before Disney softened the originally gruesome fates of the stepsisters in Cinderella. You’ve likely heard that in Aschenputtel, the stepsisters traditionally cut off parts of their feet to fit in the shoes of their stepsister. Many versions have birds pecking their eyes out to penalize their deeds. Steely Briony delivers justice in a similar vein, at least in her morality play. One can suspect from foreshadowing and the title of the novel, however, that Briony will be punishing herself much like she punishes her characters. The introduction lets us know how adamantly Briony believes in retribution, and her anal character flaws may in fact be her redemption.