In which Briony face real, wounded soldiers, and Lola's wedding
21 comments:
Sarah
said...
Well, the first part of this reading was…graphic to say the least. The scene just before all the soldiers come in, when Briony and Fiona are laughing in the park, was cheerful, but it was clear that this happiness would be very short-lived. At first, the scene made me happy and hopeful; like the scene with the plow, I had a feeling that normalcy was still possible despite the war. However, as the two start walking back to the hospital, Briony observes that “[h]er worries did not disappear, but slipped back, their emotional power temporarily exhausted” (273). That made me see it differently, and reminded me more of what Cecelia was doing when she talked to Leon after the fight in the kitchen. Maybe their jokes were just futile distractions, and maybe the rare moments of normalcy aren’t enough solace and can’t make up for the horrors of the war (which, in all honesty, is true). Or maybe it was a good thing that her worries didn’t bother her as much. I couldn’t tell.
As Briony begins to care for all the different soldiers, I got the sense that her need for heroism, her need to be seen as an accepted, helpful member of the adult world, has come into play again for the first time since the night of the rape. She is being given more responsibilities for the first time, and for the most part she seems to handle them aptly. She seems to be taking on the same role as Cecelia now, with her soothing nature to all the soldiers. On that note, maybe she is learning that sometimes you can’t solve everyone’s problems; sometimes the best you can do is make them feel better. The touching scene with Luc was a good example of this. Also, Briony’s realization that “[s]he came the closest she would ever be to a battlefield, for every case she helped with had some of its essential elements—blood, oil, sand, mud, seawater, bullets, shrapnel, engine grease…” (287) made me realize that maybe Briony is getting what she deserved in a way, because now she knows what it was like for Robbie. (Even though she wasn’t responsible for Robbie’s going to war, but I’ll talk more about that in my final blog post.)
And then there was the letter from the writing magazine regarding her story about the fountain incident. I found it interesting how all the things that the person in the letter was saying she should have happen in the story, like an intervention from the little girl, was so accurate to what really happened. I couldn’t tell if the writer of the letter could tell whether the story was real or not. Anyway, I think the assessment Briony provides of what the letter means pretty much sums up exactly what I was going to say about it: “Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing from her novella—and was necessary to it….It was not the backbone of a story that she lacked. It was backbone” (302).
Then there was the wedding scene. I didn’t actually have too many thoughts about it; while I don’t exactly blame Briony for keeping her mouth shut, the scene was just really aggravating to read in general. But I also think that having seen the movie first really killed the suspense.
Chaos is thrown left and right throughout this section. Just when everything seems to be going along smoothy, Briony and the other nurses encounter a mass upon mass of injured soldiers who have just returned from the war. Constantly through Briony’s nurse training, she feels like she will fail in her duty (she after all almost drops a wounded soldier when carrying him on a stretcher). Chaos is just something that Briony is not use to. For instance, the men whom Briony attempts to lead to their beds in a ward, do not seem to be aware of Briony’s existence and disobey Briony’s orders of waiting until they are assigned to their beds. “They did not look at her. They were staring past her, into the grand Victorian space of the ward, the lofty pillars, the potted palms, the neatly ranged bed and their pure, turned–down sheets. . . .But they were fanning out now across the ward. Each man had seen the bed that was his. Without being assigned, without removing their boots, without baths and delousing and hospital pajamas, they were climbing onto their beds. (Pages 276 – 277). Now compare the chaos of the hospital and the order Briony expresses when she was a child, by lining up her farm animals. “She was one of those children posses by a desire to have the world just so. Whereas her big sister’s room was a stew of unclosed books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays, Briony’s was a shrine to her controlling demon: the model farm spread across a deep window ledge consisted of the usual animals . . . Her wish for a harmonious, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel.” (Pages 4 – 5). In Briony’s case, chaos is an unfamiliar factor that she encounters. When Briony does her best to handle the situation of the hundreds of wounded men, she is determined not to fail. But in the wake of chaos, Briony comes away from her assignment, humiliated. As soon as Briony experiences her first taste of war and chaos, she realizes that she is no longer in control of the situation like a writer always is. Furthermore, Briony is struck with the harsh reality that the wounded men that she attends to are not objects, but real life bleeding and breathing people. “From this new and intimate perspective, [Briony] learned a simple, obvious thing she had always know, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.” (Page 287). From this sense of enlightenment, Briony realizes that all the nursing in the world would not make up for what Briony has done to Cecilia and Robbie. Just like the soldiers, Briony tends to, she has ‘easily torn’ the lives of Cecilia and Robbie, thus her crime cannot be ‘easily mended.’ As I read along to the part of Lola and Paul Marshall’s wedding, it struck me that the location where the wedding was taking place resembled the place where Briony witnessed Lola’s attack. “What appeared among the cool trees as she approached was a brick barn of elegant dimensions, like a Greek temple, with a black–tilted roof, windows of plain glass, and a low portico with white columns beneath a clock tower of harmonious proportions.” (Page 304). Even when Briony enters the church, she expects the wedding to be exactly like the scene of the crime (and the notion that the cathedral reminded Briony of the temple that the rape took place on the Tallis estate). However, when Briony actually enters the church, she is disappointed when her imagination has led her to the false expectations of Lola being once again a victim.
I found it quite meta to read the publisher's reaction to Briony's novel. I agreed sometimes with the publisher - I too feel that Briony/McEwan care more about scenery, clothes, and irrelevant thoughts than the actual plot. The plot and the passion seem to boil beneath the surface. I spend much of the book waiting for something to happen. While a daily diary is all well and good, I'm curious about more things than how the milkman give Briony directions. Briony doesn't follow the advice. For once she doesn't change the truth, and keeps the true, very expensive vase in the story. In addition, Briony decides to keep the multiple perspective of the incident. While I agree that the new perspectives don't offer much in the sense of plot, but these sections introduce us to Robbie, Cecelia, and Briony's inner thoughts.
It was interesting to imagine the story if child Briony had don't the things the publisher thought she might. The publisher thought Briony might act as the couple's messenger. Briony did, but not in the way the publisher would have predicted.
Goodness, this section was excruciating to read – I had to take several breaks. McEwan begins the section with Briony and Fiona spending time together in a park, enjoying each other’s company. A quick change brings about chaos and urgency. This transformation from a nearly perfect paradise to a hellish environment mirrors the situation before and after Briony committed her crime.
CC’s note to Briony, responding to her submitted story, was extremely detailed. Although I was originally perplexed at the aspect of McEwan using a letter to critique his own writing, I am now intrigued by this method. On the other hand, when CC is giving Briony suggestions in regard to improving her story, I thought some points were too obvious. I already understood that CC was hinting at a deeper storyline, so some For example, when CC wrote, “Might the young couple come to use her as a messenger?” (p. 296), I got really irritated – I felt that it lost the subtlety.
This chapter includes so much death and injured soldiers meaning that the war has hit England. When Briony and Fiona return from their walk in the park they face so many injured soldiers.When she is rushing treating soldiers one reminds me a lot of Robbie. This is due to the fact that he has the same injury as Robbie. He has shrapnel in his leg. Since Briony wrote this book I feel that this mirrors Robbie's injury only that Briony is able to save this soldier. What I liked about this chapter was her description of walking up like it was Christmas on page 297. She then goes on to say that it was the opposite to describe the war. No one was happy, people were dying and the Germans were going to invade. What really made me angry in the end of the chapter is that she realizes all the clues that she didn't see before when she accused Robbie. She finally sees that Paul Marshall is the one responsible for Lola's rape. I really wanted to yell at her for not seeing it sooner and saving Robbie from dying and the war.
Briony and her friend are told to go to the town to have a day off. They are when they hear the news but they are happy to go. On their way back they see a bunch of ambulances and troop transports unloading wounded troops into the hospital. The two girls immediately started to run down to the hospital to help out. Upon arriving a doctor tells Briony to help him lift up a stretcher and carry a wounded man inside. As she is carrying the man her wrist starts to hurt and she drops the stretcher slightly. This makes her feel extremely bad so she goes back down to help somewhere else. Once all the troops are in the building she helps remove dirty dressing so that the doctor can look at the wounds and evaluate the severity of them. Briony encounter three terribly wounded people but a man named Luc has the worst injury because he has some severe brain damage and thinks Briony is someone from his past. This is really hard for Briony to deal with because he is talking to her like they have been friends and she doesn’t want to tell him he is wrong. Eventually she pretends to be the girl he thinks she is just to comfort him before he dies. This is the nicest thing she could have done for this poor guy right before he dies. The most annoying thing about this reading is the fact that John Marshall and Lola get married and Briony FINNALLY realizes that Marshall was the rapist all along! Uhhh Briony get a clue!
I liked reading about Briony taking care of the soldiers. It shows true character growth and maturity, because what she did was very mature and grown-up. Even though this was graphic, I enjoyed reading this portion of the novel, especially when Briony interacted with the soldier missing part of his brain. When she realized just to play along and go with what he was saying instead of telling him he was incorrect with her identity, it was so sweet. I fell a little bit in love with Luc in those final moments. It's so sad that war can cut someone's life so short when they had potential to do so much more, and this chapter really exhibited that. The other part of the chapter was Lola and Paul's wedding. I liked that - it was a small "where are they now?" moment. Especially when Lola saw Briony - I wish I could've known what was going through her head.
This section is definitely different from what we have been reading. Fiona and Briony return to the hospital to find a large group of injured soldiers. When she is helping carry a soldier to one of the rooms, all she can think about it how she will fail and drop him. This is one of the few times that I am not annoyed by her self centered thinking. Honestly, I'd probably be thinking the same thing. I would be so nervous of messing everything up. She also does not know what to do when the soldiers do not follow the proper procedures but she is reassured that the proper procedures can be bent or not followed because no one expected this many people. McEwan is very talented in expressing the horrors of war. Each injured soldier we meet feels like a real person and as I read this, I didn't feel like I was reading about fear, I felt that I was feeling the soldier's fear.
I feel like all I am writing about in these blogs is how much Briony annoys me, but here are some more reasons. In this section Briony returns from her nice calm walk in the park to many soldiers who had just arrived, many with very gruesome injuries. I felt that Briony cared less about making sure the soldiers were okay and more about making sure she did everything exactly right. For instance, when she is trying to lead soldiers to their beds, instead of waiting for her say-so, they all lie down in random beds. Briony freaks out about this because they were dirty and they were going to mess up the beds. This is reminiscent of the beginning when she was the girl who lined all of her animals up in the same direction, yet she is in a very different, much more serious situation now. Later, when Briony meets with the dying soldier, her sense of fantasy actually comes into use. Her ability to make up stories was what got her into trouble the first time by convincing her that it was Robbie who attacked Lola, yet now she is using it to help console a dying soldier. During Lola and Paul’s wedding I was really surprised that almost no one even recognized her. Yes, Lola saw her but she just kept walking, and the twins actually seemed happy to see her, but I would expect someone to talk to her. She had cut herself off from the family for five years, but I would expect someone to see her.
An element of chaos has been implemented in this twisted story. Thousands of wounded and mutilated soldiers are taken to the hospital. Distressed Briony is forced to abandon her sense of order and cope with the onset of such trauma. Briony is surrounded by the effects of war. She can no longer think of only herself, because "[t]here was always someone worse."(284) Briony shows her more compassionate side to a dying soldier named Luc. Luc suffered from severe head trauma, and was extremely delusional. Briony holds his hand and tells him she loves him and eventually goes along with his fantasy.
Briony then goes to her cousin Lola's wedding. Lola marries her "rapist" and Briony sees that her crime was not all her fault. Lola or Marshall could have said something to stop Robbie from being accused. This frustrated me and made me hate Lola most of all.
So this was horrible. I think it is a testament to McEwan's writing because I felt like I was going to pass out reading the parts with the wounded soldiers. Hoo man, that was rough! And I'm not even that squeamish. When I watch a movie with gore, I'm fine, except they're usually quite campy like 'Oh a pick axe just went through your abdomen? Well you're kind of a humungous douche bag and therefore kind of deserve it, haha! Anyway, I think there is something about reading the words and then having that translated into an image in my mind, that adds something horrific to it. Perhaps it is because the soldiers were wounded in war fighting for their country, and not stupid teenagers staying in a cabin. I'm not sure specifically how many times the words "blood", "black", and "congealed" were used but my answer is too many times. Holy bean bags Batman! I'm not sure I have ever been this uncomfortable at the thought of hospitals! I think it made sense for Briony to be so desperately focused on the nurse's procedure because it would require her to take herself out of her current situation and focus on a memory. The alternative to being aloof in that hospital is horrendous! In the movie they have a shot of Fiona crying in a corner, which is perfectly understandable. That would be me. Crying in a corner.
Briony's small triumph with the man and his leg on page 279 was actually rather uplifting. The level of excitement i felt was surprising to me. I felt my relief match Briony's, because I was 99.99% sure that soldier was going to lose that leg.
When Briony sat with the dying french patient, Luc, I felt it wasat this moment where she let go of nurse procedure a little. Not at first. She was so determined to get him to know where he was and who she was. But then she played along and I like that. It was shocking to have this one sweet moment juxtaposed with what was essentially his head falling apart. I did not enjoy that image. No I did not. Of course then he dies, and she gets his blood on her face.
I finally figured out what bothered me so much about the wedding. It's not that it shouldn't have happened. Or that Briony should have yelled something because I do not believe that would would have solved anything. Of course that would be entertaining as hell. What bothers me is that Paul Marshall and Lola Quincy are getting married at the expense of others. Specifically Robbie and Cecilia. It seemed that nothing so selfish has ever happened. It seemed only right that Briony be present on their union seeing how she made it happen. It was oh so very anticlimactic that Briony's confrontation with Lola amounts to the pursing of lips.
For the first time in this book I wasn't seething while reading from Briony's point of view. While Briony is usually all caught up in what's going on in her head and not realizing other people actually have emotions too she finally puts all that aside and tends to other people in this part. Her descriptions of all the horror going on around her are all curt and factual showing her total focus in that moment. However she doesn't immediately jump into this mindset. When she first arrives back at the hospital after having had a nice day at the park she tries desperately to cling to all the rules and customs she learned in nursing school. Once she realizes the superficiality of these rules and starts to think about helping the soldiers instead of just not getting herself in trouble then she becomes a self-less person for however briefly.
This is the part in the book where Briony is truly tested. After a leisurely day in the park with her friend she is faced with having to follow what shes learned. Putting order into disorder. However, because she is Briony she can't adapt. When she is faced with having to take care of soldiers who just want to sleep but trying to put a protocol on them. This is why the scene between her and the dying soldier is so significant. Because you see that Briony can be sympathetic, and she can also be un-selfserving at points in her life.
This section starts peaceful and calm with Briony and Fiona at a park enjoying themselves. I found it interesting that when the two girls were laughing loudly, causing a disruption, they were compared to nuns. No one would reprehend them due to their uniforms/job. However, good times do not last forever, and the foreshadowing in the previous section rears its ugly head. They head back to the hospital where they see soldiers being brought in, not just a few but many.
When she leads the men to a ward for them to be admitted, the men just get into any bed filthy dirty. This causes Briony to freak out due to protocol not being followed. While among many injured men, all she can think about is how much trouble she is going to be in once the head sisters find out. It is also during this part that she learns that sometimes protocol doesn't need to be followed.
This section shows a side of Briony that we didn't get to see in the earlier readings. When the ward sister directs her to a French solider with extensive head trauma, she goes to him and, after a bit, plays along with his mistaken memory of the past. This shows Briony as unselfish, which is a nice change from the "I'M DOING EVERYTHING WRONG! POOR ME" Briony.
Briony is beginning to truly regret the things she did instead of complaining about her guilt and begging for sympathy. She seems concerned about how others feel. She begins to feel empathy, it’s not all about Briony anymore. She also realizes that she is not the only one involved in the crime, Paul Marshall and Lola are just as guilty as she is. She is not the only one that could be suffering from a guilty conscious. She dose not want sympathy, she wants others to feel better. She does not feel the need to make up stories about Robbie to atone and make herself feel better, “she could imagine how she might abandon her ambitions of writing and dedicate her life in return for these moments of elated, generalized love” (287). She wants to help the wounded soldiers.
This is another spot in which Briony turns the whole thing into a pity party revolving around her. When she comes back from a leisurely stroll in the park with Fiona, and comes back to find a bunch of wounded men at the hospital, she rushes into action! by complaining about how tired her arms get while carrying a wounded soldier to the operating room. I mean, the soldier is missing half his face, but her arms are tired...
The one time she actually shows empathy is when she interacts with the brain damaged soldier, Luc. She holds his hand and sits with him as he slowly fades. She accidentally takes off his bandages, realizes she made a mistake, then blames herself. She sees this as an atonement, but I personally think that you need to do a lot more then work at a hospital to make up for killing two people (even indirectly).
I really liked this passage; “All Fiona had to do was live her life, follow the road ahead and discover what was to happen. To Briony, it appeared that her life was going to be lived in one room, without a door,” (272). I think it’s a very effective comparison, revealing Briony’s self pity as well as her vanity. How does she know what Fiona’s life is like? Briony is blind to all plights but her own. She accounts only for her perspective, never grasping the idea that no one individual’s perception of the world is the ultimate reality. That’s her problem in the first place. She wouldn’t have accused Robbie of the crime if she perceived correctly what was happening in the library. It’s not a child’s responsibility to understand sex, but the way she skewed the picture hurt a lot of people. She acted on assumption, a child’s naïve assumption.
The discrepancies of procedure in the hospital didn’t interest me and I didn’t particularly enjoy the graphic descriptions of festering wounds, but I do think McEwen did a very good job of setting the scene. The imagery is clear and sensory details effectively communicate the energy and atmosphere of the scene; “the sisters moved between the beds swiftly…administering the transfusion needles to connect the injured to the vaco-litres of whole blood and yellow flasks of plasma that hung like exotic fruits from the tall mobile stands… The soft echo of voices, medical voices, filled the ward, and was pierces regularly by groans and shouts of pain,” (278). I also like the way McEwen connected the scene to the story, inserting the bit about Briony wondering if one of those soldiers could be Robbie. There’s wishful thinking going on, Robbie wouldn’t “turn to her with gratitude, realize who she was, and take her hand, and in silently squeezing it, forgive her,” (281) even if he was among the injured soldiers being treated in the ward. It’s a pleasant suggestion nonetheless.
I was saddened by the descriptions of the maimed soldiers. So many were on their deathbeds, and it’s all the more depressing that they were fully aware that they would die there. The worst was the scene with fifteen-year-old Luc. It’s heartbreaking—the boy lost half of his head and half of his mind along with it. Briony’s conversation with him is a muddle of scattered thoughts and nonsensical phrases. By the time he asked, “’Do you love me?’” (291), it was honestly hard for me to finish reading the scene.
In the first pages of the novel, Briony reveals that she’s weary of people reading her stories because her characters may expose her weaknesses and faults. Now she realizes that “the evasions of her little novella were exactly those of her life,” (302). She used to be worried about others discovering her secrets, now she’s starting to figure out that she’s afraid of self-reflection. The rejection letter shook her up a bit—her nursing work has been occupying her full attention, allowing her mind to become numb. She had been hiding from herself. She finally admits, “It was not the backbone of a story that she lacked. It was backbone,” (302).
So this section was full of blood and guts and gruesome descriptions. Although, I don’t think anyone truly relishes reading about horrifyingly gory descriptions and images, it does keep you enthralled in the story and makes for interesting reading. I always find reading about war, particularly the aftermath, to be extremely harrowing. All of the wounded, and exhausted soldiers barely surviving in the hospital is so disturbing to me, and rightfully so. No one should have to experience the horrors and trauma that soldiers and civilians in wartime do. The scene that made me actually enjoy the book and truly pulled on my heartstrings was when Briony had a conversation with the French soldier as he slowly drifted into a delirious death. I could imagine the conversation so clearly in my mind, so clearly I was nearly brought to tears. As much criticism as I have lain upon this book, this truly was a stupendous scene. And I commend Ian McEwan on his authorial skills.
I don’t know what Briony was expecting when she went to talk with Cecilia. She’s too smart to think that admitting to her perjury (five years after the fact) would inspire some sort of reconciliation with Cecilia. She couldn’t have gone in thinking that her too-little too-late change of heart would make her crime any less unforgivable. Is she celebrating her bravery to go out and finally tell the truth? I don’t know. I don’t think she’s brave, I think she’s sorry.
I have to give Cecilia some major credit for refraining from slamming the door in Briony’s face. She was cold, and rightfully so, but she still offered Briony a piece of her time and a listening ear. When Robbie showed up, I was prepared for a more severe confrontation. And there may have been one had Cecilia not successfully calmed Robbie down. It takes a special kind of relationship to be able to bring someone back to their senses in a moment of rage or panic. All Cecilia had to do was tell him to “come back.” Robbie trusted her. I was genuinely happy for them, that they were together and in love after all that had happened.
I appreciated the presence of Briony’s flashback in the scene; “Cecilia came to rescue her from a nightmare and take her into her own bed. Those were the words she used. Come back. It was only a bad dream. Briony, come back,” (330). This is the only time I’ve truly felt sorry for Briony, even if she deserved what she got. Cecilia had transferred her love and care for Briony to Robbie. Robbie replaced her. It’s as if Briony and Cecilia are no longer sisters. They had cut themselves off from each other long ago, but this brought convincing finality to their broken relationship. It’s almost like the vase. The first time it broke, the pieces were tentatively put back into place. But once it shattered, it was gone. Forever.
This section really shows McEwan's ability to make a fictional story seem like it is all accounts of real people during the war. His descriptions of the gore and injuries were actually really interesting to me because they are just some words this man put on a paper that cause such a response of disgust in my head it's weird to me. I enjoyed the part where Briony is trying to cling to all the rules the Hospital has so that she will not get in trouble for breaking them, but the Sister ends up actually being a person and did not whip Briony for accidentally allowing tired soldiers to go to sleep without having to do their procedures. Also the section with the dying head hole guy was really great. At first I was confused because I thought maybe she had actually known this man, but then I noticed differences and discovered that she was finally not thinking about herself and doing something selfless for a man that is probably seconds away from death.
The section shows again how Briony can get into her only little world. Similar to the early chapters, Briony has difficulty empathizing with the people in her life. When she was at the lake with Robbie, she thought everything would work out the way she thought it would happen. Robbie would save her and they would fall in love. She did not understand why Robbie became angry with her for behaving idiotically. Her fantastical ideas continued when she was a nurse. It was difficult for her to break her procedures when dealing with the wounded soldiers. It was easier for her to think of them as work than as people, but they are people. Being with the French soldier showed that she can escape her fiction and deal with reality, and do the right thing.
21 comments:
Well, the first part of this reading was…graphic to say the least. The scene just before all the soldiers come in, when Briony and Fiona are laughing in the park, was cheerful, but it was clear that this happiness would be very short-lived. At first, the scene made me happy and hopeful; like the scene with the plow, I had a feeling that normalcy was still possible despite the war. However, as the two start walking back to the hospital, Briony observes that “[h]er worries did not disappear, but slipped back, their emotional power temporarily exhausted” (273). That made me see it differently, and reminded me more of what Cecelia was doing when she talked to Leon after the fight in the kitchen. Maybe their jokes were just futile distractions, and maybe the rare moments of normalcy aren’t enough solace and can’t make up for the horrors of the war (which, in all honesty, is true). Or maybe it was a good thing that her worries didn’t bother her as much. I couldn’t tell.
As Briony begins to care for all the different soldiers, I got the sense that her need for heroism, her need to be seen as an accepted, helpful member of the adult world, has come into play again for the first time since the night of the rape. She is being given more responsibilities for the first time, and for the most part she seems to handle them aptly. She seems to be taking on the same role as Cecelia now, with her soothing nature to all the soldiers. On that note, maybe she is learning that sometimes you can’t solve everyone’s problems; sometimes the best you can do is make them feel better. The touching scene with Luc was a good example of this. Also, Briony’s realization that “[s]he came the closest she would ever be to a battlefield, for every case she helped with had some of its essential elements—blood, oil, sand, mud, seawater, bullets, shrapnel, engine grease…” (287) made me realize that maybe Briony is getting what she deserved in a way, because now she knows what it was like for Robbie. (Even though she wasn’t responsible for Robbie’s going to war, but I’ll talk more about that in my final blog post.)
And then there was the letter from the writing magazine regarding her story about the fountain incident. I found it interesting how all the things that the person in the letter was saying she should have happen in the story, like an intervention from the little girl, was so accurate to what really happened. I couldn’t tell if the writer of the letter could tell whether the story was real or not. Anyway, I think the assessment Briony provides of what the letter means pretty much sums up exactly what I was going to say about it: “Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing from her novella—and was necessary to it….It was not the backbone of a story that she lacked. It was backbone” (302).
Then there was the wedding scene. I didn’t actually have too many thoughts about it; while I don’t exactly blame Briony for keeping her mouth shut, the scene was just really aggravating to read in general. But I also think that having seen the movie first really killed the suspense.
Chaos is thrown left and right throughout this section.
Just when everything seems to be going along smoothy, Briony and the other nurses encounter a mass upon mass of injured soldiers who have just returned from the war.
Constantly through Briony’s nurse training, she feels like she will fail in her duty (she after all almost drops a wounded soldier when carrying him on a stretcher).
Chaos is just something that Briony is not use to. For instance, the men whom Briony attempts to lead to their beds in a ward, do not seem to be aware of Briony’s existence and disobey Briony’s orders of waiting until they are assigned to their beds. “They did not look at her. They were staring past her, into the grand Victorian space of the ward, the lofty pillars, the potted palms, the neatly ranged bed and their pure, turned–down sheets. . . .But they were fanning out now across the ward. Each man had seen the bed that was his. Without being assigned, without removing their boots, without baths and delousing and hospital pajamas, they were climbing onto their beds. (Pages 276 – 277). Now compare the chaos of the hospital and the order Briony expresses when she was a child, by lining up her farm animals. “She was one of those children posses by a desire to have the world just so. Whereas her big sister’s room was a stew of unclosed books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays, Briony’s was a shrine to her controlling demon: the model farm spread across a deep window ledge consisted of the usual animals . . . Her wish for a harmonious, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel.” (Pages 4 – 5). In Briony’s case, chaos is an unfamiliar factor that she encounters. When Briony does her best to handle the situation of the hundreds of wounded men, she is determined not to fail. But in the wake of chaos, Briony comes away from her assignment, humiliated. As soon as Briony experiences her first taste of war and chaos, she realizes that she is no longer in control of the situation like a writer always is. Furthermore, Briony is struck with the harsh reality that the wounded men that she attends to are not objects, but real life bleeding and breathing people. “From this new and intimate perspective, [Briony] learned a simple, obvious thing she had always know, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.” (Page 287). From this sense of enlightenment, Briony realizes that all the nursing in the world would not make up for what Briony has done to Cecilia and Robbie. Just like the soldiers, Briony tends to, she has ‘easily torn’ the lives of Cecilia and Robbie, thus her crime cannot be ‘easily mended.’ As I read along to the part of Lola and Paul Marshall’s wedding, it struck me that the location where the wedding was taking place resembled the place where Briony witnessed Lola’s attack. “What appeared among the cool trees as she approached was a brick barn of elegant dimensions, like a Greek temple, with a black–tilted roof, windows of plain glass, and a low portico with white columns beneath a clock tower of harmonious proportions.” (Page 304). Even when Briony enters the church, she expects the wedding to be exactly like the scene of the crime (and the notion that the cathedral reminded Briony of the temple that the rape took place on the Tallis estate). However, when Briony actually enters the church, she is disappointed when her imagination has led her to the false expectations of Lola being once again a victim.
I found it quite meta to read the publisher's reaction to Briony's novel. I agreed sometimes with the publisher - I too feel that Briony/McEwan care more about scenery, clothes, and irrelevant thoughts than the actual plot. The plot and the passion seem to boil beneath the surface. I spend much of the book waiting for something to happen. While a daily diary is all well and good, I'm curious about more things than how the milkman give Briony directions. Briony doesn't follow the advice. For once she doesn't change the truth, and keeps the true, very expensive vase in the story. In addition, Briony decides to keep the multiple perspective of the incident. While I agree that the new perspectives don't offer much in the sense of plot, but these sections introduce us to Robbie, Cecelia, and Briony's inner thoughts.
It was interesting to imagine the story if child Briony had don't the things the publisher thought she might. The publisher thought Briony might act as the couple's messenger. Briony did, but not in the way the publisher would have predicted.
Goodness, this section was excruciating to read – I had to take several breaks. McEwan begins the section with Briony and Fiona spending time together in a park, enjoying each other’s company. A quick change brings about chaos and urgency. This transformation from a nearly perfect paradise to a hellish environment mirrors the situation before and after Briony committed her crime.
CC’s note to Briony, responding to her submitted story, was extremely detailed. Although I was originally perplexed at the aspect of McEwan using a letter to critique his own writing, I am now intrigued by this method. On the other hand, when CC is giving Briony suggestions in regard to improving her story, I thought some points were too obvious. I already understood that CC was hinting at a deeper storyline, so some For example, when CC wrote, “Might the young couple come to use her as a messenger?” (p. 296), I got really irritated – I felt that it lost the subtlety.
This chapter includes so much death and injured soldiers meaning that the war has hit England. When Briony and Fiona return from their walk in the park they face so many injured soldiers.When she is rushing treating soldiers one reminds me a lot of Robbie. This is due to the fact that he has the same injury as Robbie. He has shrapnel in his leg. Since Briony wrote this book I feel that this mirrors Robbie's injury only that Briony is able to save this soldier. What I liked about this chapter was her description of walking up like it was Christmas on page 297. She then goes on to say that it was the opposite to describe the war. No one was happy, people were dying and the Germans were going to invade.
What really made me angry in the end of the chapter is that she realizes all the clues that she didn't see before when she accused Robbie. She finally sees that Paul Marshall is the one responsible for Lola's rape. I really wanted to yell at her for not seeing it sooner and saving Robbie from dying and the war.
Briony and her friend are told to go to the town to have a day off. They are when they hear the news but they are happy to go. On their way back they see a bunch of ambulances and troop transports unloading wounded troops into the hospital. The two girls immediately started to run down to the hospital to help out. Upon arriving a doctor tells Briony to help him lift up a stretcher and carry a wounded man inside. As she is carrying the man her wrist starts to hurt and she drops the stretcher slightly. This makes her feel extremely bad so she goes back down to help somewhere else. Once all the troops are in the building she helps remove dirty dressing so that the doctor can look at the wounds and evaluate the severity of them. Briony encounter three terribly wounded people but a man named Luc has the worst injury because he has some severe brain damage and thinks Briony is someone from his past. This is really hard for Briony to deal with because he is talking to her like they have been friends and she doesn’t want to tell him he is wrong. Eventually she pretends to be the girl he thinks she is just to comfort him before he dies. This is the nicest thing she could have done for this poor guy right before he dies.
The most annoying thing about this reading is the fact that John Marshall and Lola get married and Briony FINNALLY realizes that Marshall was the rapist all along! Uhhh Briony get a clue!
I liked reading about Briony taking care of the soldiers. It shows true character growth and maturity, because what she did was very mature and grown-up. Even though this was graphic, I enjoyed reading this portion of the novel, especially when Briony interacted with the soldier missing part of his brain. When she realized just to play along and go with what he was saying instead of telling him he was incorrect with her identity, it was so sweet. I fell a little bit in love with Luc in those final moments. It's so sad that war can cut someone's life so short when they had potential to do so much more, and this chapter really exhibited that.
The other part of the chapter was Lola and Paul's wedding. I liked that - it was a small "where are they now?" moment. Especially when Lola saw Briony - I wish I could've known what was going through her head.
This section is definitely different from what we have been reading. Fiona and Briony return to the hospital to find a large group of injured soldiers. When she is helping carry a soldier to one of the rooms, all she can think about it how she will fail and drop him. This is one of the few times that I am not annoyed by her self centered thinking. Honestly, I'd probably be thinking the same thing. I would be so nervous of messing everything up. She also does not know what to do when the soldiers do not follow the proper procedures but she is reassured that the proper procedures can be bent or not followed because no one expected this many people.
McEwan is very talented in expressing the horrors of war. Each injured soldier we meet feels like a real person and as I read this, I didn't feel like I was reading about fear, I felt that I was feeling the soldier's fear.
I feel like all I am writing about in these blogs is how much Briony annoys me, but here are some more reasons. In this section Briony returns from her nice calm walk in the park to many soldiers who had just arrived, many with very gruesome injuries. I felt that Briony cared less about making sure the soldiers were okay and more about making sure she did everything exactly right. For instance, when she is trying to lead soldiers to their beds, instead of waiting for her say-so, they all lie down in random beds. Briony freaks out about this because they were dirty and they were going to mess up the beds. This is reminiscent of the beginning when she was the girl who lined all of her animals up in the same direction, yet she is in a very different, much more serious situation now.
Later, when Briony meets with the dying soldier, her sense of fantasy actually comes into use. Her ability to make up stories was what got her into trouble the first time by convincing her that it was Robbie who attacked Lola, yet now she is using it to help console a dying soldier.
During Lola and Paul’s wedding I was really surprised that almost no one even recognized her. Yes, Lola saw her but she just kept walking, and the twins actually seemed happy to see her, but I would expect someone to talk to her. She had cut herself off from the family for five years, but I would expect someone to see her.
An element of chaos has been implemented in this twisted story. Thousands of wounded and mutilated soldiers are taken to the hospital. Distressed Briony is forced to abandon her sense of order and cope with the onset of such trauma. Briony is surrounded by the effects of war. She can no longer think of only herself, because "[t]here was always someone worse."(284) Briony shows her more compassionate side to a dying soldier named Luc. Luc suffered from severe head trauma, and was extremely delusional. Briony holds his hand and tells him she loves him and eventually goes along with his fantasy.
Briony then goes to her cousin Lola's wedding. Lola marries her "rapist" and Briony sees that her crime was not all her fault. Lola or Marshall could have said something to stop Robbie from being accused. This frustrated me and made me hate Lola most of all.
So this was horrible. I think it is a testament to McEwan's writing because I felt like I was going to pass out reading the parts with the wounded soldiers. Hoo man, that was rough! And I'm not even that squeamish. When I watch a movie with gore, I'm fine, except they're usually quite campy like 'Oh a pick axe just went through your abdomen? Well you're kind of a humungous douche bag and therefore kind of deserve it, haha! Anyway, I think there is something about reading the words and then having that translated into an image in my mind, that adds something horrific to it. Perhaps it is because the soldiers were wounded in war fighting for their country, and not stupid teenagers staying in a cabin. I'm not sure specifically how many times the words "blood", "black", and "congealed" were used but my answer is too many times. Holy bean bags Batman! I'm not sure I have ever been this uncomfortable at the thought of hospitals! I think it made sense for Briony to be so desperately focused on the nurse's procedure because it would require her to take herself out of her current situation and focus on a memory. The alternative to being aloof in that hospital is horrendous! In the movie they have a shot of Fiona crying in a corner, which is perfectly understandable. That would be me. Crying in a corner.
Briony's small triumph with the man and his leg on page 279 was actually rather uplifting. The level of excitement i felt was surprising to me. I felt my relief match Briony's, because I was 99.99% sure that soldier was going to lose that leg.
When Briony sat with the dying french patient, Luc, I felt it wasat this moment where she let go of nurse procedure a little. Not at first. She was so determined to get him to know where he was and who she was. But then she played along and I like that. It was shocking to have this one sweet moment juxtaposed with what was essentially his head falling apart. I did not enjoy that image. No I did not. Of course then he dies, and she gets his blood on her face.
I finally figured out what bothered me so much about the wedding. It's not that it shouldn't have happened. Or that Briony should have yelled something because I do not believe that would would have solved anything. Of course that would be entertaining as hell. What bothers me is that Paul Marshall and Lola Quincy are getting married at the expense of others. Specifically Robbie and Cecilia. It seemed that nothing so selfish has ever happened. It seemed only right that Briony be present on their union seeing how she made it happen. It was oh so very anticlimactic that Briony's confrontation with Lola amounts to the pursing of lips.
For the first time in this book I wasn't seething while reading from Briony's point of view. While Briony is usually all caught up in what's going on in her head and not realizing other people actually have emotions too she finally puts all that aside and tends to other people in this part. Her descriptions of all the horror going on around her are all curt and factual showing her total focus in that moment. However she doesn't immediately jump into this mindset. When she first arrives back at the hospital after having had a nice day at the park she tries desperately to cling to all the rules and customs she learned in nursing school. Once she realizes the superficiality of these rules and starts to think about helping the soldiers instead of just not getting herself in trouble then she becomes a self-less person for however briefly.
This is the part in the book where
Briony is truly tested. After a leisurely day in the park with her friend she is faced with having to follow what shes learned. Putting order into disorder. However, because she is Briony she can't adapt. When she is faced with having to take care of soldiers who just want to sleep but trying to put a protocol on them. This is why the scene between her and the dying soldier is so significant. Because you see that Briony can be sympathetic, and she can also be un-selfserving at points in her life.
This section starts peaceful and calm with Briony and Fiona at a park enjoying themselves. I found it interesting that when the two girls were laughing loudly, causing a disruption, they were compared to nuns. No one would reprehend them due to their uniforms/job. However, good times do not last forever, and the foreshadowing in the previous section rears its ugly head. They head back to the hospital where they see soldiers being brought in, not just a few but many.
When she leads the men to a ward for them to be admitted, the men just get into any bed filthy dirty. This causes Briony to freak out due to protocol not being followed. While among many injured men, all she can think about is how much trouble she is going to be in once the head sisters find out. It is also during this part that she learns that sometimes protocol doesn't need to be followed.
This section shows a side of Briony that we didn't get to see in the earlier readings. When the ward sister directs her to a French solider with extensive head trauma, she goes to him and, after a bit, plays along with his mistaken memory of the past. This shows Briony as unselfish, which is a nice change from the "I'M DOING EVERYTHING WRONG! POOR ME" Briony.
Briony is beginning to truly regret the things she did instead of complaining about her guilt and begging for sympathy. She seems concerned about how others feel. She begins to feel empathy, it’s not all about Briony anymore. She also realizes that she is not the only one involved in the crime, Paul Marshall and Lola are just as guilty as she is. She is not the only one that could be suffering from a guilty conscious. She dose not want sympathy, she wants others to feel better. She does not feel the need to make up stories about Robbie to atone and make herself feel better, “she could imagine how she might abandon her ambitions of writing and dedicate her life in return for these moments of elated, generalized love” (287). She wants to help the wounded soldiers.
This is another spot in which Briony turns the whole thing into a pity party revolving around her. When she comes back from a leisurely stroll in the park with Fiona, and comes back to find a bunch of wounded men at the hospital, she rushes into action! by complaining about how tired her arms get while carrying a wounded soldier to the operating room. I mean, the soldier is missing half his face, but her arms are tired...
The one time she actually shows empathy is when she interacts with the brain damaged soldier, Luc. She holds his hand and sits with him as he slowly fades. She accidentally takes off his bandages, realizes she made a mistake, then blames herself. She sees this as an atonement, but I personally think that you need to do a lot more then work at a hospital to make up for killing two people (even indirectly).
I really liked this passage; “All Fiona had to do was live her life, follow the road ahead and discover what was to happen. To Briony, it appeared that her life was going to be lived in one room, without a door,” (272). I think it’s a very effective comparison, revealing Briony’s self pity as well as her vanity. How does she know what Fiona’s life is like? Briony is blind to all plights but her own. She accounts only for her perspective, never grasping the idea that no one individual’s perception of the world is the ultimate reality. That’s her problem in the first place. She wouldn’t have accused Robbie of the crime if she perceived correctly what was happening in the library. It’s not a child’s responsibility to understand sex, but the way she skewed the picture hurt a lot of people. She acted on assumption, a child’s naïve assumption.
The discrepancies of procedure in the hospital didn’t interest me and I didn’t particularly enjoy the graphic descriptions of festering wounds, but I do think McEwen did a very good job of setting the scene. The imagery is clear and sensory details effectively communicate the energy and atmosphere of the scene; “the sisters moved between the beds swiftly…administering the transfusion needles to connect the injured to the vaco-litres of whole blood and yellow flasks of plasma that hung like exotic fruits from the tall mobile stands… The soft echo of voices, medical voices, filled the ward, and was pierces regularly by groans and shouts of pain,” (278). I also like the way McEwen connected the scene to the story, inserting the bit about Briony wondering if one of those soldiers could be Robbie. There’s wishful thinking going on, Robbie wouldn’t “turn to her with gratitude, realize who she was, and take her hand, and in silently squeezing it, forgive her,” (281) even if he was among the injured soldiers being treated in the ward. It’s a pleasant suggestion nonetheless.
I was saddened by the descriptions of the maimed soldiers. So many were on their deathbeds, and it’s all the more depressing that they were fully aware that they would die there. The worst was the scene with fifteen-year-old Luc. It’s heartbreaking—the boy lost half of his head and half of his mind along with it. Briony’s conversation with him is a muddle of scattered thoughts and nonsensical phrases. By the time he asked, “’Do you love me?’” (291), it was honestly hard for me to finish reading the scene.
In the first pages of the novel, Briony reveals that she’s weary of people reading her stories because her characters may expose her weaknesses and faults. Now she realizes that “the evasions of her little novella were exactly those of her life,” (302). She used to be worried about others discovering her secrets, now she’s starting to figure out that she’s afraid of self-reflection. The rejection letter shook her up a bit—her nursing work has been occupying her full attention, allowing her mind to become numb. She had been hiding from herself. She finally admits, “It was not the backbone of a story that she lacked. It was backbone,” (302).
So this section was full of blood and guts and gruesome descriptions. Although, I don’t think anyone truly relishes reading about horrifyingly gory descriptions and images, it does keep you enthralled in the story and makes for interesting reading. I always find reading about war, particularly the aftermath, to be extremely harrowing. All of the wounded, and exhausted soldiers barely surviving in the hospital is so disturbing to me, and rightfully so. No one should have to experience the horrors and trauma that soldiers and civilians in wartime do. The scene that made me actually enjoy the book and truly pulled on my heartstrings was when Briony had a conversation with the French soldier as he slowly drifted into a delirious death. I could imagine the conversation so clearly in my mind, so clearly I was nearly brought to tears. As much criticism as I have lain upon this book, this truly was a stupendous scene. And I commend Ian McEwan on his authorial skills.
I don’t know what Briony was expecting when she went to talk with Cecilia. She’s too smart to think that admitting to her perjury (five years after the fact) would inspire some sort of reconciliation with Cecilia. She couldn’t have gone in thinking that her too-little too-late change of heart would make her crime any less unforgivable. Is she celebrating her bravery to go out and finally tell the truth? I don’t know. I don’t think she’s brave, I think she’s sorry.
I have to give Cecilia some major credit for refraining from slamming the door in Briony’s face. She was cold, and rightfully so, but she still offered Briony a piece of her time and a listening ear. When Robbie showed up, I was prepared for a more severe confrontation. And there may have been one had Cecilia not successfully calmed Robbie down. It takes a special kind of relationship to be able to bring someone back to their senses in a moment of rage or panic. All Cecilia had to do was tell him to “come back.” Robbie trusted her. I was genuinely happy for them, that they were together and in love after all that had happened.
I appreciated the presence of Briony’s flashback in the scene; “Cecilia came to rescue her from a nightmare and take her into her own bed. Those were the words she used. Come back. It was only a bad dream. Briony, come back,” (330). This is the only time I’ve truly felt sorry for Briony, even if she deserved what she got. Cecilia had transferred her love and care for Briony to Robbie. Robbie replaced her. It’s as if Briony and Cecilia are no longer sisters. They had cut themselves off from each other long ago, but this brought convincing finality to their broken relationship. It’s almost like the vase. The first time it broke, the pieces were tentatively put back into place. But once it shattered, it was gone. Forever.
This section really shows McEwan's ability to make a fictional story seem like it is all accounts of real people during the war. His descriptions of the gore and injuries were actually really interesting to me because they are just some words this man put on a paper that cause such a response of disgust in my head it's weird to me. I enjoyed the part where Briony is trying to cling to all the rules the Hospital has so that she will not get in trouble for breaking them, but the Sister ends up actually being a person and did not whip Briony for accidentally allowing tired soldiers to go to sleep without having to do their procedures. Also the section with the dying head hole guy was really great. At first I was confused because I thought maybe she had actually known this man, but then I noticed differences and discovered that she was finally not thinking about herself and doing something selfless for a man that is probably seconds away from death.
The section shows again how Briony can get into her only little world. Similar to the early chapters, Briony has difficulty empathizing with the people in her life. When she was at the lake with Robbie, she thought everything would work out the way she thought it would happen. Robbie would save her and they would fall in love. She did not understand why Robbie became angry with her for behaving idiotically. Her fantastical ideas continued when she was a nurse. It was difficult for her to break her procedures when dealing with the wounded soldiers. It was easier for her to think of them as work than as people, but they are people. Being with the French soldier showed that she can escape her fiction and deal with reality, and do the right thing.
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