(no subject)

[sunshine_queen]

So, I just saw Atonement again. Happily, Paige cried harder than I did, but I still shed a bucket of tears. It's



What of Cecilia?

I find it so interesting that in Briony's own story, she is selfish enough to ignore her sister. There is the accused, and the accuser, but not the one damaged along with the accused, and I really find it fascinating. We know that Cecilia is a nurse, a ward sister or whatever, and that she lives in Balham. And she writes to Robbie. That's it. She doesn't get her own section.

Why would Briony ignore her? I would argue that would be too painful to imagine her sister's suffering, but if she can imagine Robbie's (which has to be greater,) why not Cee's?

I think that's why I like Cecilia best. I get to wonder so much- how intense was her guilt, from her family and her class? How much did she hate herself for all the time she wasted with Robbie? Did she hate herself for not hiding the letter better? How did she find out about Robbie's death? Did Nettle write her, or was a dispatch sent to Mrs Turner, who then told Cecilia?

What also intrigues me is that one could argue that Robbie didn't have to die. If he hadn't been accused and recruited out of prison, if he had enlisted, he could have gone for officers' training. That means (I think) that he would've been evacuated sooner from Dunkirk, and therefore might have survived, or, he might never have been wounded at all. This I understand. But Cecilia- her death was entirely a fluke. A bomb hit the gas and water mains over the station; the station flooded. Cecilia drowned. She would've drowned if Robbie had been there, she would have drowned if Robbie had been alive and still at war, she would have drowned if Robbie was on his way home to her. The water pipe burst, and the tube was flooded. Cecilia died.

(It makes it all the sadder, really: Cecilia was as innocent in the situation as possible- Robbie was innocent, but he was sentenced, Cecilia only suffered because she loved him- and she died in an unpreventable way.)

It was... not fitting, but good, that it was a flood that killed her, since water played such a huge, awesome role in this story: the fountain, the lake, the ocean, the flooding, the effing beach they wanted to get to so badly. It's so horrible to think that they never saw each other after the tea room, and that he didn't get on with her. I think sometimes that Cecilia got off at the next stop to wait to see if he'd come on the next bus, but it makes it too depressing. They still never saw each other again. They didn't even have pictures of each other, and Robbie lighting a match to look at the postcard just slays me.

And I know that I'm a sucker when it comes to love stories, but, really? It's the most beautiful one ever, because it's so doomed and so horrible and so real that you just ache for them and what they never had.


So, anyway, those are some of my thoughts. I have so many more, but the amazingness of it all makes it all swirl around my head.

Comments

[prettyparadox.livejournal.com]

Yes, I honestly think that it's selfless. Why would I be any less than sincere, unless this isn't a question, or rather a patronizing one? Briony didn't give HERSELF the happy ending - Robbie and Cecilia didn't forgive her, so she wasn't acting in self-interest, in assuaging a guilt that can't be erased. The truth matters little in this book - it didn't matter when the police took the word of a 13 year-old girl instead of opening an investigation, it wasn't going to matter years after they closed the file on Lola's assault. Even if Robbie's record was to be corrected and expunged, the damage has already been done. He served the time, he's been separated from his love.

If the ending was all that mattered, had Briony wrote the truth, the tragic end of Robbie and Cecilia, would her atonement have been successful then? Because I don't think it would.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

Okay, clearly I'm the retard here, because... I honestly DO NOT SEE how you could possibly think of it as selfless. Because your reasoning, as I see it, boils down to this:

- Because in her FICTIONAL VERSION, Robbie and Cecilia didn't forgive her, that means that Briony was not selfish.

=> because she was not selfish, that makes her book selfless.

I don't remember the names of all the fallacies I learned in TOK, but I know that that's a big honking one.

Briony CANNOT give herself a happy ending because, oh, I don't know, there isn't one. Robbie and Cecilia are unable to forgive her because, aside from the whole ruined-lives bit, they are also MUCH WITH THE DEAD. Very much dead. So very dead, in fact, that Briony has had sixty some years to mess with the details of their ruined lives to fit her own selfish need to feel better. The whole book was written in self-interest, because if she was truly being selfless, she wouldn't have written the book. She would have suffered in silence. There is no name to clear, no record to expunge. Writing the book benefited NO ONE except for Briony, which pretty much earns her the crown of selfishness.

The thing is? The truth matters. And the violation/bastardization of the truth (in addition to the blatant disregard for it) is a HUGE PART OF THE NOVEL. It matters that Briony lied then, it mattered that Briony lies in the novel. It matters because all these years later Briony is still dealing with things she can't comprehend, and she's still using her words to give her version of the events, which is what she did when she accused Robbie and what she's doing now. Briony didn't learn her lesson, and, sadly, doesn't even realize it.

Her atonement will never be successful. But I think changing the ending sets her back four or five steps. She may not be selfish on purpose, but selfish she is.

[prettyparadox.livejournal.com]

Are you essentially saying that even attempting to atone for one's mistakes is selfish? Then the ending doesn't matter, because Briony shouldn't have written the novel in the first place? Briony's James Frey then, but even if she didn't achieve her personal absolution, as a writer she decided on the ending that fit with the book she wrote. Robbie and Cecilia are very much dead, so they couldn't forgive Briony - well, what does it matter what they'd think about the book then? They're dead. Those are the facts, if that's all you care about.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

My friend and I were just discussing that, actually: if Briony's book got published, and people found out that it was essentially a lie, there would be a lot of unamused Oprah Book Club readers out there.

It's not selfish to attempt atonement in and of itself, but Briony can't achieve it because those whom she wounded the deepest are no longer there to give it. Therefore, this attempt may seem to Briony to be an atonement, but it's totally not.

And it does matter what Robbie and Cecilia would think. It's called "respecting the dead." Some people care about that sort of thing. Especially when they're, oh. I don't know. Trying to atone for the great distress they caused.

[prettyparadox.livejournal.com]

Well screw Oprah's minions club following her every pick of book, candidate endorsement, etc. etc. A book can be beautiful and poignant even if it's not entirely factual, or a true memoir. In Briony's case, the crux of the facts are presented - that Robbie never assaulted Lola, that he was wrongly imprisoned.

Briony never said that she achieved atonement; in fact she admitted she will always fall short, "The attempt is all that matters." [paraphrased] Briony used her powers as a writer to give Robbie and Cecilia the happy ending in her book that was unattainable in real-life, without wedging herself into it. How is that selfish? As a writer Briony made the decision for the best ending for her book, for her readers. The burden of the truth, the sins of the past, Briony still carries.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

Dude, it's not like Oprah made something up to turn people against James Frey, he was a liar who said what happened to him was true and it wasn't.

A book can be beautiful and poignant and not true, but when it is presented as true, as Briony's book is, then it ceases to be... oh, true. When people write their memoirs or autobiographies, they might change a date, or overexaggerate, or not mention something, but very rarely do they say, "well, my mom died when I was seven, but in my memoirs, I'm going to make her... not die. Because, well. I just... think the readers would like that better." Because that's... a lie. And therefore it should be fiction and not autobiographical or whatever.

Briony used her powers as a writer to give Robbie and Cecilia the happy ending in her book that was unattainable in real-life, without wedging herself into it.

Writing it at all was wedging herself into their lives. She was meddling. Again. Some more. Changing the ending for her readers makes it seem that Briony thinks less of her readers, who couldn't handle the ugly truth. It is selfish that Briony is essentially wrote fanfic to her sister's life. Briony might still be burdened by the truth, but she isn't doing it out of a feeling of obligation, she did it for her readers.

[prettyparadox.livejournal.com]

Dude, Oprah trots out her army and soon all anyone can see is how that didn't happen in "real-life," instead of looking at the body of work itself, and perhaps the value of the work itself outweighs whether or not it actually happened. Briony acted not out of malice or ill-will, in my opinion, but out of love. And you can go on and contest how it's not love, it's meddling and once again ruining her sister's life, blahblah, but the underlying intention that she had in writing the book is to make things "right"; atonement. Of all the mysteries about Cecilia, what about that of her sisterhood with Briony? It's your opinion that Cecilia wouldn't appreciate Briony's book, but nobody really knows what Cecilia would think; it's all conjecture. And before Briony's crime, Cecilia loved her sister very much. And perhaps despite the crime, maybe she still does. Family members hurt each other, and the wounds run deep, but the bonds remain. Cecilia, and Briony chose to ignore each other for the remainder of their lives, but it would have been impossible to have never thought about each other. It's not unfathomable to think Cecilia ran a thousand conversations in her head, of what she would say to Briony if they ever met again. Maybe Cecilia would not appreciate Briony changing the ending, but perhaps she would recognize how it must have taken her sister a token of apology, courage and love, to publicly admit she ruined Robbie's life. It's convenient to think of Briony soley as a "life ruiner," the foil to an epic love story. But then why didn't McEwan write from Cecilia's, Robbie's, or an "omniscient" point of view? People who do bad things aren't always bad people.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

If James Frey had wanted his book to be respected as a body of work in and of itself, he wouldn't have lied and called it a "true" story. He made his own bed when he called that book autobiographical and... it wasn't. The value of the work cannot overcome the basic fact that the author said "I did not make this up. This happened." when really he totally made it up.

This entire conversation was started when you conjectured that I had something against Briony to start with. This is the first conversation I've had with anyone where I have not been defending Briony, so you can kindly get off your valiant steed of defensiveness. You think that Briony wrote her false ending out of love. And I agree. I think Briony legitimately thought she was doing what she thought was right. Can you do something and be unintentionally selfish? Yes, you totally can. And that's what I think happened here.

Of Cecilia: she is a mystery which! Was my original message. If Briony felt so badly towards her sister, she might have included her more. I think Cecilia wouldn't appreciate Briony's book for several reasons, which are as followed:

- She cut herself off from her family after Robbie's incarceration.
- She ignored all attempts from her siblings to reconciliate.
- If we can believe that the letter excerpts we read in the book were true, she told Robbie that she could never forgive Briony.
- She might very well have loved her sister, but that has nothing to do with approving of her actions.
- Bonds beyond blood do not necessarily remain.
- And to say so off-handedly that Cecilia probably though often of Briony is ridiculous. Yeah, sure. She probably wondered idly about her sister. But I'm sure she also thought 'oh, well, I'm totally worrying about my boyfriend because he's in a prison because of my sister's testimony' or 'boy, I'm so glad Briony testified at Robbie's trial, cause now he's in France and it's just fabulous.'
- It is entirely fathomable to think that Cecilia probably thought about what she'd say if she saw Briony again. That does not mean in any way that she wanted to see her sister, or that she wanted to forgive her sister.
- And yes. Perhaps Cecilia would have seen through her sister's flight of fancy for the umpteenth time and thought, 'oh, I suppose Briony did what she thought was right,' but she could have thought that about the trial, too. That doesn't mean that what she did was right, it means that Cecilia could acknowledge that Briony thought what she was doing was right. They are two very separate things.

But you're right: everything about conjecture about Cecilia. So you could be entirely wrong too.

No one ever said that people who do bad things are always bad people. I didn't say Briony was a bad person, I said she was a life-ruiner. One who ruins lives. Briony ruined both Cecilia's and Robbie's lives, therefore making her a life-ruiner.

[prettyparadox.livejournal.com]

In everything I've said, I've prefaced with a "maybe" or "perhaps," so how this translates to a "valiant steed of defensiveness," is beyond me, but then again so is this entire "conversation." Good night, and good luck.

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

... Except where you didn't. But whatever.