How old is robbie in atonement

Similarly, is atonement based on a real story? Briony's book - within the context of McEwan's fictional story - is real : Briony did write a book, essentially just we see it on the screen up to the point where Briony is riding the Underground train. The Cecilia's apartment scene is written in Briony's book by Briony. The beach scene is not. Robbie is sent to prison and four years later, once released from prison but now a soldier during World War I, Robbie and Cecilia meet again and she tells him that she loves him and when the war is over, to come back to her.

Last Updated: 28th August, Keira Knightley as Cecilia Tallis, the elder of the two Tallis sisters. Saoirse Ronan as Briony Tallis, aged the younger Tallis sister and an aspiring novelist. Romola Garai as Briony, Vanessa Redgrave as older Briony.

Sibisse Rofo Professional. Does atonement end happy? The novel is not just about atonement , but is the atonement itself. Briony gave him a happy ending —so the atonement , then, is the effort to remake the past and fix what she did in imagination, even if she couldn't in real life. Meritxell Wittmaack Professional. Why does Briony lie in Atonement? Briony has a major crush on Robbie as revealed later in the movie and by the scene in which she jumps into the river to see if he would save her.

She is filled with rage when she sees him making love to her sister Cecilia. Mawdo Adelt Professional. What is the lie in Atonement? The most violent acts of the day happen offstage, so to speak, but the most enduringly destructive one is a lie Briony tells, a lie that will ruin two lives and overshadow her own for decades. In other words, they think highly of Robbie even though nobody's making them.

That's some real respect for you. Robbie's ability to speak French learned while he was at Cambridge proves invaluable to the three men as they trek across the French countryside. We can see that throughout the novel it isn't Robbie's background that defines him, but his intelligence and his love—attributes which have no social class. But while Robbie's intelligence and love don't come from his social class, the contexts in which they are cultivated and flourish are. For instance, Robbie may be generally without social anxiety, but his comfort with the various members of the Tallis family is also the result of having been allowed to befriend the family.

When we learn that "He had spent his childhood moving freely between the bungalow and the main house" 1. Jack Tallis also pays for his education, thereby giving Robbie a better shot at realizing his intellectual potential than he likely otherwise would have had. Robbie's courtship with Cecilia is complicated by the class gap between them. When, in an excess of confusion and shyness, he takes his shoes off to come in the house, Cecilia decides that he is "playacting the cleaning lady's son come to the big house on an errand" 1.

Their odd relationship—almost siblings, and yet with a gap between them—is part of why it's hard for Robbie to tell Cecilia he's in love with her, and part of why it's hard for Cecilia to figure out she's in love with him.

Robbie's background has more permanent consequences as well. The reason the Tallises were so willing to believe he had raped Lola is in part, it seems, because of his class. Cecilia writes to him in prison that "I'm beginning to understand the snobbery that lay behind [the family's] stupidity," and adds that her mother "never forgave" his success at Cambridge 2. Growing up…godamnit!

How much growing up do you need to do? There are soldiers dying in the field at eighteen. Old enough to be left to die on the roads. Did you know that? I gave them happiness, but I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me. Not quite, not yet. If I had the power to conjure them at my birthday celebration…Robbie and Cecilia, still alive, sitting side by side in the library…. Plot Summary. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does.

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Already have an account? Sign in. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Literature Poetry Lit Terms Shakescleare. Download this LitChart! Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our Teacher Edition on Atonement can help. Themes All Themes.

Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive. Robbie is studying at Cambridge to be a doctor, and his education is funded by the Tallises, who treat him like a son. He is also passionately in love with Cecilia Tallis. However, he is wrongly imprisoned when Briony misidentifies him as the man who raped Lola.

After three years in prison, he enlists to fight in World War II in exchange for a reduced sentence. Though still later in the novel it is revealed that Briony invented this encounter as a kind of atonement, to give him a life with Cecilia even though he was in fact killed in combat.

For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:. Part 1, Chapter 8 Quotes. Related Themes: Perspective. Page Number and Citation : 74 Cite this Quote. Explanation and Analysis:. Related Characters: Robbie Turner. Page Number and Citation : 85 Cite this Quote.

Part 1, Chapter 10 Quotes. Page Number and Citation : Cite this Quote. Part 1, Chapter 11 Quotes. She reasons that they could not draw any sense of hope or satisfaction from it.

But above all, she wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their happiness by being together. Since they could not have the time together they so much longed for in reality, Briony wanted to give it to them at least in her novel.

McEwan has also said that he was directly influenced by L. Hartley's The Go-Between. Atonement also contains a fictional letter addressed to Briony by the literary critic and editor Cyril Connolly. Atonement was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction. In late , it was reported that romance and historical author Lucilla Andrews felt that McEwan had failed to give her sufficient credit for material on wartime nursing in London sourced from her autobiography No Time for Romance.

An opera is to be written based on the novel, with music by Michael Berkeley and libretto by Craig Raine. Pop Culture Wiki Explore. Wiki Content. Recent blog posts Forum. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Atonement novel. Edit source History Talk 0. Categories books Add category.