An Untidy Finish

Atonement as Political Gothic

Abstract

In the controversial epilogue of Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001), Briony Tallis informs the reader that she has “always liked to make a tidy finish.” The statement is formally ironic because it renders the conclusion of Atonement untidy: only in the epilogue do readers learn that Briony, a character within the narrative, also constructed the narrative. Her guilty consciousness, haunted by the ghosts of the past, the villains of the present, and the dementia that awaits her in the near future, is the filter through which readers have experienced the story of the love affair between Briony’s sister, Cecilia, and Cecilia’s lover, Robbie Turner. An exploration of the ethical crafting of narrative – both fictional and historical (that is, ostensibly “non fictional”) – Atonement formally mimics the comforting conventions of both religious ritual and realist description in order to suggest that “reality” is much more accurately apprehended (and represented) by a gothic, rather than a realist, sensibility.