Discuss how McEwan uses the setting in part one of "Atonement".

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Navneet Virk

Discuss how McEwan uses the setting in part one

Setting aids the reader to understand in depth about the characters and events. They can be used to set an atmosphere or reveal a characters mood. McEwan uses setting as a key part of the puzzle of the novel ‘Atonement’ and it has worked very much in his favour as it makes the novel itself such a great piece to read. In part one of the novel, the setting is held mostly in the Tallis household, (and a scene at Robbie’s house), exploring different parts of the Tallis area which was a property inherited by their Grandfather.

The Tallis household is viewed as an unattractive building by the character of Cecilia, who first describes her opinion of the house in a negative approach, she expresses that ‘Morning sunlight, or any light, could not conceal the ugliness of the Tallis home.’ This quote highlights her disgusts for the house structure as she goes on to illustrate the house with a the use of a list of the house feature such as ‘bright orange bricks’ and ‘crumbling stuccoed temple’ which portrays the image of an old broken household. The use of the list shows that there are many things which are wrong with the household that are distasteful. A reason for Cecilia’s pessimistic description could be her frustration of being kept here and frustrated about her own laziness to make something of her life as she has just left university with and poor grade and no degree. Cilicia also views that if the unpleasant features where ignored ‘the view was fine enough’, McEwan may has used this to communicate Cecilia is trying to avoid obstacles in her life. Some of the obstacles is procrastinating in her life such as a childhood friend Robbie, it says that she ‘avoided Robbie by hurrying round to the front of the house’ this communicates nervousness around this character and foreshadows that she is avoiding confrontations of her new feels from him. McEwan uses the house as a hiding place for Cecelia which represent that other secrets and feelings are easily hidden in the Tallis household. Also Cecilia is currently in a standstill and she describes the abstract view of the house atmosphere as an ‘unchanging calm’. This is an indicator to her that she must start her life and she realises that ‘she must be soon moving on’. McEwan’s use of the description of the decaying household mirrors the Tallis family as it appears from the outside this seems like a fine household but when looking more closely at it cracks seem to be visible. This is representative of the family as on the surface everything seam normal but in fact when looks closer into each individual characters  ‘cracks’ in their life begin to show which no one else is aware of. There are several of these in the characters beginning with Briony’s struggle into adolescence, Robbie and Cecelia’s secret romance, the Twins and Lola’s true devastation of their parents’ divorce, Lola’s Rape and pervious attack, and Emily’s marriage falling apart. All these ‘cracks’ foreshadows an inevitable fall which in part one results in Robbie’s arrest due to lack of communication with family members in the household.

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The setting of the dinner is in the dining hall where all characters are pushed together with their all their own trebles and problems in a confined space, also on an extremely warm day. McEwan’s purpose of this setting is to provoke reaction between the characters which happened a lot in this scene. Firstly there is an awkward reaction reaction to and jokingly question to Cecelia from Leon. The question was asking of abnormal behaviour due to the hot weather, Leon asked ‘Have you behaved even worse than usual today?’ which of course the answer was yes as she had ...

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