Family Quotes in Atonement

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph) or (Part.Paragraph)

Quote #7

There was, of course, much that she did not know about Cecilia. But there would be time, for this tragedy was bound to bring them closer. (1.14.43)

Briony is thinking that jailing Robbie will bring her and Cecilia closer together. That would be a major, gigantic, unfixable error on her part, and the impetus for Briony beginning her novel.

Quote #8

"They turned on you, all of them, even my father. When they wrecked your life they wrecked mine. They chose to believe the evidence of a silly, hysterical little girl. In fact, they encouraged her by giving her no room to turn back. She was a young thirteen, I know, but I never want to speak to her again. As for the rest of them, I can never forgive what they did. Now that I've broken away, I'm beginning to understand the snobbery that lay behind their stupidity. My mother never forgave you your first. My father preferred to lose himself in his work. Leon turned out to be a grinning, spineless idiot who went along with everyone else." (2.91)

Cecilia's view of Leon here is very different than her view earlier in the novel (for an example see 1.9.66). His easy-going, see-the-best-of-everyone attitude turns out to look a whole lot of spinelessness in the face of crisis. And everyone else comes off horribly as well. This is the one-paragraph case for the prosecution against the Tallis family. It seems fairly damning.

Quote #9

Nearly every man here had a father who remembered northern France, or was buried in it. He wanted such a father, dead or alive. […] Rootless, therefore futile. He wanted a father, and for the same reason, he wanted to be a father. It was common enough, to see so much death and want a child. Common, therefore human, and he wanted it all the more. When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, a family line, connection. (2.244)

Robbie at war imagines a stable family life. There's something ironic about this though, since the Tallises' ordinary family life basically destroyed him. Still, you can hardly blame the guy for wanting to get out of France. And the Tallis family house, for all its problems, certainly looks like an appealing place to be from the middle of a war.