the shared study of paired texts atonement and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind: taking a stand...

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 both 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

The options for establishing a link between these paired texts could be:

the same genre or different genresnovel 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: I walked out the door. There's no memory left. Clementine: Come back and make up a good-bye at

least. Let's pretend we had one.

[Joel comes back] Clementine: Bye Joel. Joel: I love you... Clementine: Meet me... in Montauk...

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-as-author, compromised by her need for atonement, can no longer be seen as non-focalized.

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.


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.


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 technicianJoel’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.’


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.


Eternal Sunshine Scenes 90 – 93; DVD Ch 15 (1.12.45 – 1.16.45):

The Blameless Vestal's Lot90. Mary repeats some quotations to Howard.

91. A circus parade; Joel and Clem are there.

92. Mary kisses Howard.

93. 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…

What you notice in the Atonement passage

What you notice in the Eternal Sunshine sequence

What does the comparison reveal?

Narrative POV

Revelations

Tone

Stylistic features

Narrative contextwhere does it appear in the

plot &/or narrative structure?

References to other works, ideas or imagescinematic; artistic; literary;

political

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).


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).


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?


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.


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.


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.


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.


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)


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)


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 B-Grade 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] .’


Atonement Part One, Chapter 1 (pp.5-6):There 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.


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.’


Eternal Sunshine DVD Ch 1 (0.01.23 – 0.03.33): Valentine's Day

3. 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.

4. Joel calls in sick, from a phone box at the Montauk train station. 5. 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


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-to-be’ (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.


Eternal Sunshine DVD Ch 11 (0.47.35 – 0.50.03): Tangerine

54. Clem "feels like [she’s] disappearing.” She wants to go to Montauk – no, Boston - now. "Nothing makes sense any more."

55. Stan and Mary are dancing in their underwear on Joel’s bed. "He's pretty much on autopilot right now, anyway."

56. 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…

What you notice in the Atonement passage

What you notice in the Eternal Sunshine sequence

What does the comparison reveal?

Narrative POV

Revelations

Tone

Stylistic features

Narrative contextwhere does it appear in the

plot &/or narrative structure?

References to other works, ideas or imagescinematic; artistic; literary;

political

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’]


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.

Chiswick House and Gardens Chiswick House and Gardens

Paired architectural motifsmotifs

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;

2. 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;

3. creating a metaphor for the Tallis family’s descent, being a time-honored theme in British literature: the degeneracy of Britain’s aristocracy;

4. 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) http://itinerantprofessor.blogspot.com/2008/03/atonement.html

Paired architectural motifsPaired 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.

the shared study of paired texts atonement and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind: taking a stand...

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