The Shared Study of
Paired Texts
Atonement and Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind: taking a
stand against oblivion
What does the pairing of these
texts reveal?

The pairing of Atonement with Eternal
Sunshine enables us to focus on the
themes of fractured human relationships,
memory, forgiveness, love and the human
need for second chances.
What does the pairing of these
texts reveal?

Both texts also experiment in very obvious
ways with narrative structure, especially in
their use of time, and equally provide both
hope for redemption and a very
ambivalent tone about romantic or
passionate attachments.
The key assessment criterion
for the paired texts study is

How effectively does the student compare
and contrast texts to evaluate the role of
sociocultural and situational contexts?
 The
sociocultural context of Atonement would
account for the influence of the British class system
and English literary history on Ian McEwan’s writing of
the novel
The key assessment criterion
for the paired texts study is

How effectively does the student compare
and contrast texts to evaluate the role of
sociocultural and situational contexts?
 The
situational context of Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind would account for the influence of
American cinema as a narrative form, the
postmodernist style of Charlie Kaufman’s scriptwriting
and the casting of the film’s two stars on our reception
of the film
The options for establishing links between
these paired texts could be:

common themes, ideas, or topics
 memory,
 relationships,
 forgiveness,
 love, etc.

historical or literary periods
early 21st C. postmodernist avant-garde texts –
one literary the other ‘art-house’ cinema
 using different textual settings of a nostalgic 20th C.
past and a semi-science fiction near future
 both
The options for establishing a link between
these paired texts could be:

the same genre or different genres
 novel
vs. film;
 tragic romance;
 historical mystery vs. psychological quest

similar or contrasting cultural perspectives
 English
vs. American authors
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.
Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard"
Do not discuss what you have seen until
we as a class have seen the whole film.
 We will stop before each lesson ends so
you can record impressions, responses,
queries etc. as you view the film over the
next four lessons.


At some moments chilling, at others desperately sad, the play told a
tale of the heart whose message, conveyed in a rhyming prologue,
was that love which did not build a foundation on good sense was
doomed.
Ian McEwan, Atonement

Clementine: Joely? What if you stayed this time?

Joel:

Clementine: Come back and make up a good-bye at least.
I walked out the door. There's no memory left.
Let's pretend we had one.
[Joel comes back]

Clementine: Bye Joel.

Joel:

Clementine: Meet me... in Montauk...
I love you...
Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

‘Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions
you have entertained. What have you been judging from? …what
ideas have you been admitting?’
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Romances of Remarriage

‘…seven talkies made in Hollywood between 1934 and
1949 [define] a genre I name remarriage comedy. The
title "remarriage" registers the grouping of a set of
comedies which differ from classical comedy in various
respects, but most notably in this: In classical comedy
the narrative shows a young pair overcoming obstacles
to their love and at the end achieving marriage, whereas
comedies of remarriage begin or climax with a pair less
young, getting or threatening their divorce, so that the
drive of the narrative is to get them back together,
together again.’

Stanley Cavell, from "A Capra Moment“: Humanities, Vol. 6, No. 4 (August 1985), p.3
Romances of Remarriage

‘The central idea is that the validity or bond of marriage
is no longer assured or legitimized by church or state or
sexual compatibility or children but by something I call
the willingness for remarriage, a way of continuing to
affirm the happiness of one's initial leap, as if the chance
of happiness exists only when it seconds itself. In
classical comedy people made for one another find one
another; in remarriage comedy people who have found
one another find that they are made for each other.’

Stanley Cavell, from "A Capra Moment“: Humanities, Vol. 6, No. 4 (August 1985), p.3
Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood
Comedy of Remarriage

‘Almost without exception these films allow the principle
pair to express the wish to be children again, or perhaps
to be children together. In part this is a wish to make
room for playfulness within the gravity of adulthood, in
part it is a wish to be cared for first, and unconditionally
(e.g., without sexual demands, though doubtless not
without sexual favours). If it could be managed, it would
turn the tables on time, making marriage the arena and
the discovery of innocence.’

Stanley Cavell, Harvard U.P. 1981, reprinted 1997, p.60
anachrony [an-ak-rôni]

A term used in modern narratology to
denote a discrepancy between the order in
which events of the story occur and the
order in which they are presented to us in
the plot. Anachronies take two basic
forms: ‘flashback’ or analepsis and
‘flashforward’ or prolepsis.
Adjective: anachronic

Eternal Sunshine uses an anachronic narrative,
most markedly in its proleptic long opening
sequence – a ‘flashforward’ to Joel and
Clementine meeting for the second time
(epitomising Cavell’s narrative drive to get them
back together again) – and the analepsis of
Lacuna’s memory wiping process on Joel, which
is effectively a series of reverse ‘flashbacks’
through which we, the audience, come to
understand his relationship with Clementine.
focalization

The term used in modern narratology for
‘point of view’; that is, for the kind of
perspective from which the events of a
story are witnessed. Events observed by a
traditional omniscient narrator are said to
be non-focalized, whereas events
witnessed within the story’s world from the
constrained perspective of a single
character are ‘internally focalized’.
focalization
The nature of a given narrative’s
focalization is to be distinguished from its
narrative ‘voice’, as seeing is from
speaking.
 The events of Atonement are ‘internally
focalized’ in incredibly subtle ways through
the many narrative voices of its
characters, particularly Briony, Robbie and
Cecilia.

Paired narrative techniques


McEwan’s use of focalization complicates the
authorial partiality of a Jane Austen novel, when
the ‘omniscient narrator’ of the older Briony-asauthor, compromised by her need for
atonement, can no longer be seen as nonfocalized.
Thus focalization in Atonement is equivalent to
the narrative anachrony of Eternal Sunshine:
both techniques becoming inextricably woven
with their respective text’s themes and ideas.
Paired narrative techniques

McEwan employs this particular ‘modal
determination’ for two reasons:
 to
distinguish his narrative from the classic
realist novel's association with an omniscient
narrator (Briony's lie came from positioning
herself as such a narrator in her fictionalized
scenario of events)
 to demonstrate Briony's, the adult narrator's,
attempt to project herself into the thoughts
and feelings of her characters, an act crucial
to her search for forgiveness.
Paired narrative techniques

Gondry employs an equivalent "modal
determination" in Eternal Sunshine’s
parallel worlds of Joel Barish’s memories
& Lacuna Inc.’s employees:
 the
classic realist novel's omniscient narrator
becomes Lacuna’s memory wiping technician
 Joel’s quest within his own memories to save
Clementine is an attempt to save his better
self, specifically as a projection of himself into
her thoughts and feelings, an act crucial to his
search for forgiveness and a renewal of love.
Metafiction: self-reflexive texts
Fiction about fiction; or more especially a
kind of fiction that openly comments on its
own fictional status.
 Both Atonement and Eternal Sunshine
draw attention to their own construction as
fictional narratives, because such an
awareness is crucial to their respective
‘truths’ about the human condition.

Paired narrative scenes

Atonement Part Three (p.312):
 ‘We
found Two Figures…’ to ‘Development is
required.’

Eternal Sunshine DVD Ch 15 (1.12.45 –
1.16.45):
 ‘I
like watching you work, Howard…’ to ‘You
can have him. You did.’
Paired narrative scenes

Atonement Part Three (p.312):
 Cyril
Connolly’s letter is an odd interpolation in
the narrative – the first time the novel turns on
itself, creating a sense of dislocation that
makes us pause to reflect on the process of
writing and the whole artificial construct: a
product of drafting and redrafting, criticism
and adaptation. His recommendation for an
‘underlying pull of simple narrative’ is already
there in the vase episode, because Briony’s
observation of it does now lead somewhere.
Paired narrative scenes

Eternal Sunshine Scenes 90 – 93; DVD Ch 15
(1.12.45 – 1.16.45):

The Blameless Vestal's Lot
90.
91.
92.
93.

Mary repeats some quotations to Howard.
A circus parade; Joel and Clem are there.
Mary kisses Howard.
Howard's wife, Hollis, arrives.
Plot & subplot intersect as Mary’s illusions about
Howard are shattered – the secondhand theoretical
'good' of Howard’s work vanishes when she realises
she has lost part of her own memory & experience,
profoundly changing her perspective
Worksheet for Comparative
Analysis of Paired Texts
“Grounds” for
comparison…
Narrative POV
Revelations
Tone
Stylistic features
Narrative context
 where
does it appear in the
plot &/or narrative
structure?
References to other
works, ideas or images
 cinematic;
political
artistic; literary;
What you notice in the
Atonement passage
What you notice in the
Eternal Sunshine sequence
What does the
comparison reveal?
Against Oblivion

No late twentieth century text can subscribe to
the simplified wish fulfilments of classic realist
fiction. ‘The development of nuclear weapons,’
McEwan has said, ‘shows the dissociation of
science from feelings,’ of outer and inner worlds
we inhabit.

Interview with John Haffenden (1985), quoted in Brian Finney’s essay
“Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement” (2002)
Against Oblivion – Atonement

World War Two, that introduced the world to mass ethnic
cleansing, the Cold War and the permanent threat of
nuclear deterrence, appears to have brought forth mainly
aesthetic structures that reflect the complexity and horror
of life in the second half of that century. It is a time in
history when the Marshalls, who, equally guilty, lack
Briony's conscience, use the War to make their fortune
and are then treated as public benefactors. Compared to
Briony, they "have no remorse, no need for atonement"
(McEwan, 2002 interview).

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
Against Oblivion – Atonement

Atonement ends not just with the revelation of the deaths
of Robbie and Cecilia, but with the diagnosis of Briony's
vascular dementia and her refusal to have the lovers
forgive her even in her fictional account of their survival proof that in her literary act of atonement Briony has
finally learned how to imagine herself into the feelings of
others. Responding to the criticism that his endings are
too pessimistic, McEwan has said, "I never did trust
those novels where, for all their dark insights, or that
they ended in a funeral, there was always someone
walking away and bending to pick up a flower" (2001
interview).

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
Against Oblivion – Eternal Sunshine

The new millennium of 2004 is a time in history when a
‘health provider’ like Dr Howard Mierzwiak can use
people's misery to make his reputation and is respected
by his employees as a public benefactor. Compared to
Joel, he has no remorse, any need for atonement
obliterated by Mary’s submission to his medical
treatment. Like Atonement, Eternal Sunshine heads
toward a pessimistic ending with the revelation of
Lacuna Inc.’s deceptions destroying the lovers’
opportunity for a fairy tale second chance.
Against Oblivion – Eternal Sunshine

But in the film’s narrative logic, forgiveness then
becomes a prerequisite for the beginning of love. Just as
Joel has progressively imagined himself into the feelings
of another throughout the film, the harrowing statements
on the Lacuna tapes force Joel and Clementine to
confront each others’ harshest judgments. At the very
end, would McEwan still refuse their opportunity to run
away and play in the snow?
Lacuna Inc.
A lacuna is a blank gap or missing part. As
a central feature within Eternal Sunshine’s
narrative structure, Lacuna Inc symbolises
‘the dissociation of science from feelings,’
of outer and inner worlds we inhabit.
 How is this so?


Yet, as McEwan admits, Part Three "has about it
both an act of cowardice [. . .] but also it's also
her stand against oblivion she's seventy seven
years old, her tide is running out very fast [. . .]
She does not have the courage of her
pessimism. [. . .] She knows that when this novel
is finally published [. . .] she herself will only
become a character" (McEwan, Silverblatt).

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

Is Briony's work of fiction an evasion or an act of
atonement or both? What exactly does she
mean when she says that atonement "was
always an impossible task, and that was
precisely the point" (351)? Is she implicitly
recognizing the contradiction at the heart of her
narrative the impossibility of avoiding
constructing false fictions around others at the
same time as one is required to enter
imaginatively into their lives?

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

Or is McEwan suggesting that the attempt is all
we can ask for, an attempt that is bound to fail,
but that can come closer to or stray further from
the reality of others? Robbie's and Cecilia's
happiness cannot be restored to them by an act
of corrective fiction.

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)

http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

Nevertheless the attempt to imagine the feelings
of others is perhaps the one corrective that we
can make in the face of continuing human
suffering. The novel ends on a note of ambiguity.
Yet an appreciation of ambiguity is just what
would have prevented Briony from indicting
Robbie in her first fictionalized narration of these
events.

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
What is really wrong with the
classic realist novel?
In classic realist fiction the events seem to
narrate themselves, thus removing any
sense of the literary work as a product of a
controlling voice.
 Discourse – language that draws attention
to its production – assumes a speaker and
a hearer, thus opening itself to resistance,
dispute, critical questioning.

What is really wrong with the
classic realist novel?

From his earliest collections of short stories Ian
McEwan has consistently drawn attention to the
status of his fiction as discourse by alluding to or
parodying traditional literary genres, thereby
forcing the reader to take note of the presence of
a self conscious narrator.

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
Intertextuality as antidote to the
classic realist novel

McEwan consciously modeled Atonement on the work of "Elizabeth
Bowen of The Heat of the Day, with a dash of Rosamund Lehmann
of Dusty Answer, and, in [Briony's] first attempts, a sprinkling of
Virginia Woolf" (McEwan, Begley 56). At least one reviewer has
seen a parallel between Atonement and Bowen's The Last
September (1929) "with its restive teenage girl in the big house"
(Lee 16). Elizabeth Bowen also directly influences the form the final
novel takes. After reading Briony's first neo-modernist attempt to
give fictional shape to the events of 1935 submitted to Cyril Connolly
at Horizon, Bowen reacts by first thinking the prose "'too full, too
cloying,'" but with "'redeeming shades of Dusty Answer'" (Rosamund
Lehmann's first novel of 1927 about a young girl's growing up). Cyril
Connolly voices Bowen's final criticism of the modernist obsession
with consciousness at the expense of plot by reminding Briony that
even her most sophisticated readers "retain a childlike desire to be
told a story" (296). Briony's rewritten Part One owes its mounting
tension to Bowen's criticism passed on to Cyril Connolly and the
example offered by Bowen's earlier novel.

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
Intertextuality as antidote to the
classic realist novel

The numerous allusions to other texts warn the reader
not to treat Atonement as a classic realist text. …
Atonement offers particularly clear instances of … the
different ways in which a text, in relating to other texts,
becomes productive of further meanings, ways such as
rereading and displacement. McEwan's novel is most
obviously a rereading of the classic realist novel of the
nineteenth century, just as it is a displacement of the
modernist novel, particularly as instanced in the fiction of
Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence.

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
Intertextuality as antidote to the
classic realist novel: Clarissa

Atonement makes an ironic literary allusion to the early English
epistolary novel Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson. Arabella, the
melodramatic heroine of the thirteen-year-old Briony's playlet,
shares Clarissa's sister's name and thereby places "The Trials of
Arabella" within a literary tradition of sentimentality and
sensationalism, while inevitably lacking the psychological complexity
of the original. Cecilia is spending the vacation after graduating at
Cambridge by reading Clarissa, which Robbie considers
psychologically subtle and she boring. Their disagreement over this
text helps determine the reader's response to the rape which takes
place later the same day and which is sprung on the reader with
none of the lengthy preparation that Richardson provides.

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
Intertextuality as antidote to the
classic realist novel: Clarissa

This example appears to incorporate the two kinds of intertextual
productivity – rereading and displacement. Seen in the perspective
of the novel as a whole, Lola's rape, unlike that of Clarissa, which
leads to her death and Lovelace's damnation, is the prelude to a
long and socially successful marriage cemented by Lola's and
Marshall's determination to keep the identity of the rapist a secret
while either of them is alive. Lola's worldly manipulation of the
advantage the rape has given her over her rapist acts as a form of
social intertextuality, anticipating the laxer sexual morality of the later
twentieth century. An additional effect that such ironic references to
other literary texts have in McEwan's novel is to act as a continuous
reminder that the entire book is the final literary artifact of Briony, a
professional author.

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
Intertextuality as antidote to the
classic Hollywood film?

Sadly, Eternal Sunshine makes nowhere near
the number of intertextual allusions to film, as
Atonement does to novels and plays in the
English literary tradition. However, it does seem
to fit Stanley Cavell’s genre of remarriage
comedy extremely well, and it also rewrites
conventional romance with its complex plotting,
bleak portrayal of human relationships and
ambiguous ending.
Intertextuality as antidote to the
classic Hollywood film: The Munsters

The Munsters episode on TV when Joel fakes his murder with
ketchup as Clem storms out – ‘I’m crawling out of my skin’ – is one
obvious example of intertextual reference. In this case, there are
layered allusions to Joel’s geeky gothic humour; behind which is the
‘magic potion’ of Lacuna, manipulating his mind; and finally there is
the magic of the film makers themselves. As a 1960’s parody of
‘family values’, the TV program’s reference underscores the BGrade satire that Lacuna, Inc. becomes through the behaviour of its
employees. There is also a rich vein of irony in B&W TV’s automatic
evocation of nostalgia in a film about the erasure of memory; all the
richer because Lacuna Inc. itself arguably represents a nostalgia for
a simpler time when sex & politics were safely locked away out of
sight and out of mind.
Intertextuality as antidote to the
classic Hollywood film: Italo Svevo


Mary Svevo’s surname, which features prominently in a shot of her
office desk’s nameplate and is used by Stan when he says goodbye,
but not actually included in the closing credits, is an intertextual
reference to the Italian novelist, dramatist, and short story writer,
Italo Svevo, whose best-known novel is The Confessions of Zeno
(1923). Published at the age of 62 at his own expense, the novel,
dealing with the self-revelations of a nicotine addict, is considered
one of the greatest examples of European experimental modernist
writing. Svevo's interest in Freud was seen in his first-person
narrator, Zeno Cosini, who writes his autobiography for his
psychoanalyst, Doctor S, to find the origin of his smoking habit. The
ambiguous Italian word of the title, "coscienza", means either
conscience or consciousness.
The original screenplay for the film began with Mary as an old
woman trying to get her book about Lacuna, Inc. published. While
the etymological origin of the word ‘lacuna’ is from the Latin, it
entered the English language from the Italian in the 17th C and is
related to lagoon.
Complex textuality as antidote to
the classic Hollywood film?

A more direct parallel would be its other
narrative devices which similarly draw
attention to discourse, the discourse of film
as means of storytelling where events do
not narrate themselves, and the viewer
must do significant work to understand the
narrative.
Paired narrative scenes #2

Atonement Part One, Chapter 1 (pp.5-6):
 ‘But
hidden drawers…’ to ‘…when he was at
home.’

Eternal Sunshine DVD Ch 1 (0.01.23 –
0.03.33):
 ‘Random
thoughts for Valentine’s Day…’ to
‘She loved me. [Meet me in Montauk] .’
Paired narrative scenes #2

Atonement Part One, Chapter 1 (pp.5-6):
are ironies in Briony’s worry about
readers speculating on her self-representation
– we later discover that this is indeed the older
Briony writing about her younger self – and in
her assertion that ‘she did not have it in her to
be cruel’ (p.5), with such an ordered life
denying her the possibility of wrongdoing – she
manages to create chaos & destruction through
the very urge that seemingly prevents her from
wrongdoing: the urge to make everything neat.
 There
Paired narrative scenes #3

Atonement Part One, Chapter 13 (pp.168-9):
 ‘As
early as the week…’ to ‘…would be put at
risk.’

Eternal Sunshine DVD Ch 11 (0.47.35 –
0.50.03):
 ‘Baby
what’s going on?’ to ‘Let’s go.’
Paired narrative scenes #2
Eternal Sunshine DVD Ch 1 (0.01.23 – 0.03.33):


Valentine's Day
3.
4.
5.

Joel waits with other commuters at train station. V.O. "Random
thoughts for Valentine's Day 2004…"A train pulls in at the opposite
platform. Suddenly he turns and hurries up the stairs, across the
overpass and just manages to catch the train before the doors close.
His V.O. continues in the train as it pulls out.
Joel calls in sick, from a phone box at the Montauk train station.
V.O. continues as Joel walks in falling rain on Montauk beach //
VERTICAL CU of his notebook: V.O. "Pages ripped out. I don't
remember doing that. It appears this is my first entry in two years.“
Joel huddles on steps writing; digs in sand; sees Clementine for the
first time; looks through windows of beach house.
Joel is introduced as lonely introvert, as much through the V.O.
as Jim Carrey’s look and performance, while the film’s ironic
twist on Rom-Com’s is signaled by his Valentine’s Day joke;
but much is hinted at beneath the surface
Paired narrative scenes #3

Atonement Part One, Chapter 13 (pp.168-9):
 The
extended investigation of the rape is compressed
into a short, vital passage of reflection. Briony’s doubts
about what she saw are acknowledged and we see the
process by which they were quashed at the time. The
image of the ‘glazed surface’ of her conviction with
‘hairline cracks’(p.168) recalls the Meissen vase, mended
so they’re barely visible. Both vase & Briony’s story will
come apart again later. The final image of the ‘bride-tobe’ (p.169) who has doubts before a wedding, prefigures
Lola’s wedding to Paul in Part Three & recalls the
marriage-centred plot of The Trials of Arabella, as well as
the unsatisfactory marriages of the novel so far.
Paired narrative scenes #3

Eternal Sunshine DVD Ch 11 (0.47.35 – 0.50.03):

Tangerine
54.
55.
56.

Clem "feels like [she’s] disappearing.” She wants to go to Montauk –
no, Boston - now. "Nothing makes sense any more."
Stan and Mary are dancing in their underwear on Joel’s bed. "He's
pretty much on autopilot right now, anyway."
Patrick rummages through his bag full of Joel's mementoes of Clem
to find the Charles River photo and memorise Joel's words. He gives
Clem the jewellery Joel bought for her.
Memory is what makes sense of the world for us, so Patrick’s
theft is a disastrous & immoral basis for a relationship, as
Clem tries to recreate her lost experiences; a residue of
memory obviously survives. Significantly she does not want to
take Patrick to Montauk where she met Joel. Irony: lovesick
Stan dances heedlessly on the bed of another even more
lovesick man, with no thought or sympathy for him. The forced
quality of Clem’s 'excitement' suggests a sense of doubt in the
way she looks at Patrick – something inauthentic bothers her.
Worksheet for Comparative
Analysis of Paired Texts
“Grounds” for
comparison…
Narrative POV
Revelations
Tone
Stylistic features
Narrative context
 where
does it appear in the
plot &/or narrative
structure?
References to other
works, ideas or images
 cinematic;
political
artistic; literary;
What you notice in the
Atonement passage
What you notice in the
Eternal Sunshine sequence
What does the
comparison reveal?
Paired narrative motifs

Alongside the metafiction of his intertextuality, McEwan also draws
attention to the constructed nature of his narrative by employing
parallel or symmetrical motifs:

Marshall's rape of Lola takes place by the eighteenth century,
crumbling, stuccoed Greek temple in the Tallis grounds with its ‘row of
pillars and the pediment above them’ (68).
 The wedding of Marshall and Lola turns out to be at a London church
that looks ‘like a Greek temple,’ especially its ‘low portico with white
columns beneath a clock tower of harmonious proportions’ (304).
Separated by five years, the rape and marriage are brought into
shocking juxtaposition by purely narrative means.
 The last occasion on which Briony encounters the Marshalls at the end
of the book takes place outside the Imperial War Museum which echoes
the other two buildings in being based on Greek temple design and
featuring columns and a portico. Behind the neo-classical facades that
come to represent the ‘mausoleum of their marriage’ (307) lurk
respectively ruin, a joint lie, and the destructive memories of a war from
which Marshall made his fortune. [NB: Blake’s ‘marriage hearse’]

Briony's Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan's Atonement, Brian Finney (2002)
 http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html
Paired narrative motifs

Gondry similarly draws attention to the constructed nature of his
narrative by employing motifs as integral parts of the film’s parallel
worlds:

the photo of Clem &
Joel on the Charles
River

Patrick steals it and memorises Joel's words written on it, so he can use them on
Clementine himself. The Charles River scene is Joel’s purest, most unalloyed happy
memory

the skeleton suit &
the painting of Clem
as a skeleton

Clem wears the suit while Joel paints her; Joel begs not to lose this memory & the
painting is in the file he gets back from Mary. Linked to the Mexican artefacts in Joel’s
flat, the skeleton combines death as oblivion with resurrection: ‘Day of the Dead’

the potato-heads

they are on the top of the TV in the takeaway Chinese scene; Patrick mentions them to
identify Clem when he is telling Stan about his new girlfriend: food as art, as apart from
food that is consumed & forgotten: ‘music be the food of love’, Twelfth Night

the pendant

Joel is seen buying it at Antic Attic; he has the wrapped parcel at Rob and Carrie's;
Patrick gives it to Clementine. Her line associates it with love as knowledge

Clem's photo in a
cowboy hat

Appearing in the beautiful quilt scene, Clem is wearing it in the scene with the dead bird
and the bullies. It combines childhood innocence with courage: High Noon

the pages of Joel's
journal

he refers to their absence in scene 3 at Montauk and to Clem in her apartment that day;
Patrick clearly has them in his bag; Joel is seen working in his journal several times –
e.g. the picture of the food-face; Clem says she wants to read it when she complains he
does not tell her anything. It is clearly a substitute for real human interaction.
Paired architectural motifs
Chiswick House and Gardens

McEwan uses very particular references to architectural & landscape
design in his characterisation of the Tallis family estate as a setting for
the novel (p.18 & pp. 68-69). In her blog, architectural writer Elizabeth
Hornbeck comments that McEwan’s elaborate description of the island
temple advances his work by:
1.
describing the scene where the novel’s central crime(s) will take place on the night the
twins run away and managing in passing to associate it with delinquent behavior;
using architectural history to position the Tallis family within the landed aristocracy, the
18th century patrons for these Adam style houses (though only one half of the family is
aristocratic; the other belongs to the nouveau riche, descended from a grandfather “who
made the family fortune with a series of patents on padlocks, bolts, latches and hasps” –
a subtle gesture towards Briony’s fallible desire for secrets and obsessive tidiness;
creating a metaphor for the Tallis family’s descent, being a time-honored theme in British
literature: the degeneracy of Britain’s aristocracy;
alluding to the situation of the children in the novel, who suffer because of the adults’
neglect, much like this temple has been abandoned by its parent, the vanished Adam
house.
 Stationary Nomad: Journeys in Visual Culture, Elizabeth Hornbeck (2002)
2.
3.
4.

http://itinerantprofessor.blogspot.com/2008/03/atonement.html
Paired architectural motifs

The house at Montauk plays an equally important role in Gondry’s
narrative, though its symbolism is more closely tied to Jungian
psychology than cultural history. But as the site of Clem’s siren call for
Joel to ‘meet me in Montauk’, it links the continuity of their relationship
with longstanding traditions of American literature like Fitzgerald’s The
Great Gatsby or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables,
where the house represents a desire for stability, success, roots and a
fixed identity. Its spectacular collapse is one of the film’s many great
metaphors for Joel’s obliterating memories, but there is also
Clementine’s bold and playful home invasion as a sign of imaginative
renewal. If Atonement uses architecture as a sign of Britain’s failed
and bankrupt class system, Eternal Sunshine uses it to remind
Americans of the contingency of their identity. Post-9/11 is as good a
time as any to suggest that genuine human relationships might be
more important than real estate.