Discuss ways in which McEwan depicts the fountain scene and its significance in the novel.

Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’, a 3-part, post-modern novel, undermines notions of truth, identity, reality
and objectivity through third-person omniscient narrative trickery. The fountain scene, the catalyst for
the rest of the novel’s events, is first introduced to the reader in Chapter 2 through Cecilia’s perspective,
is reframed through Briony’s eyes in Chapter 3 and is seen from Robbie’s point of view in Chapter 8. All
of this transpires in Part 1 of ‘Atonement’, set in the summer of 1935 in England, at the Tallis’ house. In
each, McEwan addresses the complexities of the human condition and how that affects an individual’s
theory of mind.

In Chapter 2, the characterisation of Cecilia occurs. Ostensibly, Cecilia’s emotions are ones of anger and
frustration – even borderline hatred – towards herself for “wasting her days in the stews of her untidied
room” and towards Robbie for “wrong-footing her whenever he could”. The subliminal meaning behind
the way she has been feeling recently is due to her subconscious desires: for Robbie, for him to see her
half-nude, for a change of pace in her stagnant life. Her “blossoming need” relates to her developing
sexuality, which is reinforced by the sensual description of “the muscular”, “beautiful” Triton figurine,
taking note of his “thighs” and the “groove of his powerful spine”. The rift growing between her and
Robbie is not due to anything else except their inability to accept and address the sexual nuance to their
feelings that they are not even fully aware of yet. “Her youth and the glory of the day” portray her at the
height of her promise and potential: “no one [is] holding Cecilia back” – from going and making the
world hers, from seizing every opportunity to try and obtain the things she wants in life – except her
own mental cages. She is weighed down by dissatisfaction and its resulting “torpor”, “impatient, almost
desperate” to break out of the “timeless, unchanging calm” of the “accumulated inactivity of the
summer weeks” and still, “she [does] nothing”. The slow prose, lengthened by the extensive
descriptions, emphasizes her languid – even sluggish – current state of mind. It also depicts her
heightened sensitivity to her surroundings. As she currently has nothing going on in her life, everything
from “the geometry of light” to “the fine ribbing of the oak trunks” and “the pulse in her ears” is at once
“transformed into a delicious strangeness”. Everything the reader learns about her tells them one thing:
Cecilia longs for new experiences. This makes the breaking of the vase at the fountain that much more
dramatic because it creates a moment of abrupt, harsh movement in the tangible stillness of the broiling
summer air. This slightly surreal incident is characteristic of McEwan’s writing, where his characters
often carry out unexpected and resonant acts. For her, the fountain symbolises baptism and
regeneration. “When she emerged”, she set her life on its trajectory. She is reborn a “frail white nymph”
“from whom water cascaded far more successfully than it did from the beefy Triton”. The description
renders her ethereal, powerful in the wake of her vulnerability, but unknowing that this single act,
committed in a fit of blind rage and petty pride, will change her life forever.

In Chapter 3, the reader experiences Briony’s viewpoint – which flits between the Virginia Woolf-esque
stream of consciousness writing of a thoughtful adolescent and the immature, fantastical assumptions
of a child – of the fountain scene, which plays a key role in her development as a writer, and as a person.
She deeply questions the inner mechanisms of the human mind and philosophises existentialism. All of
this gives the impression of someone on the cusp of achieving self-realisation. It depicts Briony as being
much older and much more mature than her age, the reader beginning to understand the full extent of
her precocity. However, she sees the scene at the fountain unfold from “one of the nursery’s wide-open
windows”, literally watching on from the window of her childhood. In her mind, she is already reworking
her reality to fit into a story, using ostentatiously literary descriptions – the greens of the Surrey Hills are
“softened by a milky heat haze” and the “leonine yellow of high summer” – to transform the familiar
landscape of the Tallis’ estate into something foreign and interesting, that would maintain a reader’s
attention. At first, she interprets Robbie’s stance as a “proposal of marriage”, but his “imperiously
raised” hand causes her to believe that Cecilia stripped “at his insistence”, thinking he has some
“strange power” over her. Words like “imperiously” and “insistence” are indicators of her
misinterpretation of what she is witnessing. She doesn’t notice the “vase of flowers” until the very end,
and by then she has already been swayed by confirmation bias – anything and everything else that she
sees she will just interpret in a way that aligns with what she already believes to be true. Briony’s
limited, immature understanding of genre influences her interpretation of what she sees: it can only be
a fairytale romance or a dark melodrama with “blackmail” and “threats”. For Briony, the fountain scene
serves as the springboard for her casting of Robbie as the villain in the narrative she is creating in her
head. The statement “the sequence was illogical” is ironic as it is Briony’s process of writing which is
illogical – she moulds reality’s events to fit the story she is beginning to write, when it should be vice
versa. Her belief that “she had privileged access across the years to adult behaviour” and that she had
“witnessed a tableau mounted for her alone” emphasises her self-aggrandisement, which she gained
from being the coddled, sheltered baby of the Tallis family and which will ultimately be her downfall.
Here, the real fountain’s dark history of being a place where unidentified dead bodies were deposited
and where the people of Rome were invited to recognise them, has disturbing echoes in Briony’s
misidentification of Robbie as Lola’s rapist, which – through a series of even more unfortunate events –
leads to his death in WWII.

In Chapter 8, the characterisation of Robbie takes place and the readers get a final glimpse of the
fountain scene through his perspective. Robbie is the only male throughout ‘Atonement’ – and also the
only character of working-class – whose point of view we experience. His chapter begins with a
reference to the Fauvism art movement, which highlights Robbie’s education and culture. Intertextuality
is used throughout to reinforce this and to emphasise the genre of psychological realism that
‘Atonement’ falls under, with mentions of Freud’s ‘Three Essays on Sexuality’. The literary allusions to
Shakespeare and Pertrach and the boldness and vibrancy of Fauvist art relates to Robbie’s developing
sexuality and his heightened emotions, “his blood and his thoughts” so hot they warmed the water of
his tepid bath, and every mundane thing about his life from “the unmade bed” to “a towel on the floor”
becomes “disablingly sensual”. He recalls Cecilia, tantalisingly half-naked in vivid detail, but yet “in
danger of becoming unreachable”. For Robbie, the fountain scene forces him to confront his
subconscious, growing attraction for Cecilia, mesmerized by “the triangular darkness her knickers were
supposed to conceal”, and “the deep curve of her waist”. He is incredibly wrong-footed by these
“unfamiliar feelings”, which emphasises the abruptness with which he realised them, but also their
intensity. They are largely sensual, the repetition of the holophrase “wet” has erotic connotations that
reveal his lustful fantasies. He is unable to let the chasm between him and Cecilia separate them any
further, the unbearable burden of his newfound lust for Cecilia spurring him to make amends by sending
her a letter of apology which is rewritten several times. The one that actually gets delivered contains
lewd suggestions, “in my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt”, which is then read by Briony.
This only serves to cement the idea of Robbie as a “maniac” in Briony’s mind, which she uses to justify
her misidentification of him as Lola’s rapist. Robbie, much like Cecilia, is portrayed at the height of his
potential and promise, excited for the freedom his future holds. Here, the fountain is symbolic of the
fountain of youth: it represents every single one of Robbie’s wasted opportunities. All the possibilities
that await him – a career in medicine, a life with Cecilia – are snatched away the moment Briony points
her finger at him. Robbie doesn’t know it yet, but walking to the Tallis’ house and fantasising about his
bright future, is his highest point of fulfillment.

The deep, rich backstory given to inanimate objects plays a significant role in the dramatisation of the
fountain scene. Uncle Clem’s vase is symbolic of war and loss, of sacrifice for the greater good. This is
proleptic of Robbie’s future, which takes him to prison and then fighting on the frontlines during WWII,
where he spends his last days in the throes of delirium, punctuated only by his determination to make it
back to Cecilia. In Chapter 2, the lip of the vase splits “into two triangular pieces”, “writhing in the
broken light”. The personification of the broken vase pieces, tumbling to the bottom “in a synchronous,
seesawing motion”, is symbolic of the subconscious sexual tension between Robbie and Cecilia – they
are in sync but in contrasting directions. Robbie and Cecilia will end up on different paths, brought
together briefly by their love for each other, before they both die in the same year, a few months apart.
Eventually, the vase is “shattered on the steps”, dropped by Betty. This is symbolic of the irreversible
fracturing of the Tallis’ familial relationships. It represents Cecilia’s decision to become estranged from
her family, unable to forgive them for not believing in Robbie’s innocence. It also symbolises the loss of
Lola’s and Briony’s innocence and childhood after Paul’s rape, quickly becoming disillusioned after being
thrust into the dangerous, painful world of adulthood before their time.

Ultimately, McEwan’s ‘Atonement’ is a metafiction, presented, retrospectively, as a roman à clef written

by Briony Tallis over the course of fifty-nine years to atone for destroying Cecilia and Robbie’s
relationship, hopes and lives. He consciously chooses to play with the narratorial point of view to get the
reader to believe that the thoughts and feelings of the chapter’s character are genuine and real. In
Chapter 3, the writing shifts to “six decades later”, the narrative style blurring, before returning to the
immediate thoughts of 13-year-old Briony. On a first reading, we are unlikely to be aware of this
dislocation, of this undermining of the narrative, of this insertion of older Briony writing about the
younger Briony imagining writing the scene that the older Briony has just written. We would just
interpret it as an incongruous moment in the novel, and keep going. However, upon subsequent
readings, we begin to notice multiple instances of the metafictional, self-reflexive components that lay
the foundations for the absolute destruction of the literary edifice revealed to us during the epilogue
when Briony is revealed to be an unreliable narrator and McEwan pulls the proverbial rug out from
underneath us. Even then, when we go back to the beginning, we cannot help but to immerse ourselves
into the emotions and storylines of the characters as if they are their own, when really, we can never be
sure of “what really happened”. As a post-modernist, McEwan reneges on the contract we, as the
readers, have entered with him. He actively manipulates our willing suspension of disbelief to reinforce
the philosophical question of “What is true?” which acts as the overarching theme of ‘Atonement’.

Grade: 23/25