ATONEMENT AND JOE'S PALACE

Contrasting McEwan's 'Atonement' and Poliakoff's Joe's 'Palace'

Contrasting McEwan's 'Atonement' and Poliakoff's Joe's 'Palace'

Introduction

The story of Atonement revolves around a girl who lives in the fantasy world of princes, princesses and fairy tale. In Joe's Palace a billionaire employed a teenage boy as a care taker to look after his house, the story explores the relationship between them. Both stories address the issues of justice and morality. Scenes which happened outside the house refer to dishonesty and unfairness. While within freedom of the houses in both texts is almost seen as a safe and sound. (Stovel, 2004)

Discussion and analysis

Story of Atonement allows the characters of Charlotte and Richard to find a shelter within which to carry on their dishonest affair. McEwan presents the Tallis home as a location, which is insulated from the real world and the violence associated with the looming war. There is a difficulty of establishing truth in the novel. Postmodernist novel has a feature of use of multiple perspectives in the narrative, and this is use to great effect within Atonement. Atonement is all about gap between reality and fiction when a mind is set to believe on fictitious things. It deals about an individual process of thought which can let him believe in things which are different from reality. The focus is not about what a person believe wrong, but the ability of mind to make that person believe that actually what happened, and stand by his words about it. (McEwan, 2007)

Followed by tragic incident, Briony consider that Robbie is the offender and she convinces everyone else by her initial statements. Her strong faith in things makes her tell the story as her mind conceived it. It took her some time to get clarity over her belief and realise her mistake. Briony spent the rest of her life trying to atone herself in front of her sister, Robbie, her family and law. Enormous job has been done by Ian McEwan in capturing the fantasies of Briony and the fantasy world, which she has created. (Juliette, 2008)

The thoughts of each people and the motives for each person in behaving in a particular way are explained very well. The way Briony, Cecilia, Robbie, Lola etc. acts at the face of a tragedy is written very well. Ian McEwan has succeeded very well in capturing the complexities of a human mind, which could be one of the ...