Chapter 22
Summary:
Briony is sitting in her room and watching girls writing letters back home. She sees some of them crying and comforting each other and thinks that it’s all very theatrical. While Briony kept a notebook of her daily routine in great detail, the letters that she writes to her mom say very little other than the fact that she’s still alive and well. The letters Emily writes to Briony have a lot of questions (that Briony doesn’t answer) and mostly talks about the evacuees. The evacuees are three mothers and seven children from London that they had to house because of the war. Emily complains about mothers behavior (who actually behave pretty badly), she also talks about her sister Hermione being in France and the fact that Betty “dropped” Uncle Clem’s vase (Betty claimed that it had simply come apart in her hands but Emily didn’t believe her). Briony’s dad had been working even more than normal. Briony is still interested in writing; she’s written stories about her experiences as a nurse, she considered herself a “Medical Chaucer”. She wrote a long story and sent it in to a magazine called Horizon but she hadn’t heard anything from them in three months. She had also written a letter to Cecilia and the chapter ends with Briony telling the reader that Cecilia didn’t write her back.
Analysis
Briony once again shows her inability to understand other peoples’ thoughts as well as showing her lack of empathy with her comments about the other nurses with homesickness and them 'being dramatic'. She then goes on to how she wishes independence from her family and foreshadows once more on her wish to “atone” for her crime that separated their family. Briony choosing to be away from home and go work as a nurse shows that she isn't an innocent little girl anymore, that she's no longer naive and she understands that what she did was wrong. This chapter is one of the bigger foreshadowers that she wrote the book atonement. In this chapter we discover that she wrote a story; a story about a girl standing in a window looking at a fountain, a 103 page novella that will eventually become part one of the book. The story is the biggest foreshadowing in the chapter. Some smaller ones include her talking about how “she liked to write out what she imagined to be their rambling thought. (that) She was under no obligation to the truth she had promised no one a chronicle”. The first sentence refers to the book being in third person omniscient, where the narrator goes from view point to view point of the different characters. The second sentence talks about how the book is a false recording of the past in that; (spoiler!!!) Robbie dies at the end of part 2 as well as the fact that many of the events in part 3 don't actually occur.
- Your summary doesn't sound much like an abridged retelling of the chapter, though it should. Your analysis, though, is very good, especially in the way you engage with her atonement and the fact that she hasn't yet fully learned how to empathize with others. You could go into much greater depth, though, about the style in which she wrote that novella, what it says about her development, and what the feedback she receives looks like and means.
Briony is sitting in her room and watching girls writing letters back home. She sees some of them crying and comforting each other and thinks that it’s all very theatrical. While Briony kept a notebook of her daily routine in great detail, the letters that she writes to her mom say very little other than the fact that she’s still alive and well. The letters Emily writes to Briony have a lot of questions (that Briony doesn’t answer) and mostly talks about the evacuees. The evacuees are three mothers and seven children from London that they had to house because of the war. Emily complains about mothers behavior (who actually behave pretty badly), she also talks about her sister Hermione being in France and the fact that Betty “dropped” Uncle Clem’s vase (Betty claimed that it had simply come apart in her hands but Emily didn’t believe her). Briony’s dad had been working even more than normal. Briony is still interested in writing; she’s written stories about her experiences as a nurse, she considered herself a “Medical Chaucer”. She wrote a long story and sent it in to a magazine called Horizon but she hadn’t heard anything from them in three months. She had also written a letter to Cecilia and the chapter ends with Briony telling the reader that Cecilia didn’t write her back.
Analysis
Briony once again shows her inability to understand other peoples’ thoughts as well as showing her lack of empathy with her comments about the other nurses with homesickness and them 'being dramatic'. She then goes on to how she wishes independence from her family and foreshadows once more on her wish to “atone” for her crime that separated their family. Briony choosing to be away from home and go work as a nurse shows that she isn't an innocent little girl anymore, that she's no longer naive and she understands that what she did was wrong. This chapter is one of the bigger foreshadowers that she wrote the book atonement. In this chapter we discover that she wrote a story; a story about a girl standing in a window looking at a fountain, a 103 page novella that will eventually become part one of the book. The story is the biggest foreshadowing in the chapter. Some smaller ones include her talking about how “she liked to write out what she imagined to be their rambling thought. (that) She was under no obligation to the truth she had promised no one a chronicle”. The first sentence refers to the book being in third person omniscient, where the narrator goes from view point to view point of the different characters. The second sentence talks about how the book is a false recording of the past in that; (spoiler!!!) Robbie dies at the end of part 2 as well as the fact that many of the events in part 3 don't actually occur.
- Your summary doesn't sound much like an abridged retelling of the chapter, though it should. Your analysis, though, is very good, especially in the way you engage with her atonement and the fact that she hasn't yet fully learned how to empathize with others. You could go into much greater depth, though, about the style in which she wrote that novella, what it says about her development, and what the feedback she receives looks like and means.