Atonement Blog Post #4

"He forced his thoughts toward the new situation, the one that was supposed to make him happy. The intricacies were lost to him, the urgency had died. Briony would change her evidence, she would rewrite the past so that the guilty became the innocent. But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was. No one would be redeemed by a change of evidence, for there weren't enough people, enough paper and pens, enough patience and peace, to take down the statements of all the witnesses and gather in the facts. The witnesses were guilty too. All day we've witnessed each other's crimes. You killed no one today? But how many did you leave to die? Down here in the cellar we'll keep quiet about it. We'll sleep it off, Briony." (page 246 - 247)

Robbie was drowned in his thoughts and subconsciousness at the last moment of his life (as described by Briony). Yet these statements spoke not only to Robbie himself but to us, the readers, too. Unlike literature in the Victorian era, in which good and evil were distinguishable and exclusive, modernist literature realizes that good and evil are mixed within people's hearts and minds. Just like what Briony wanted to do with her novel:

"She could wirte the scene three times over, from three points of view; her excitement was in the prospect of freedom, of being delivered from the cumbrous struggle between good and bad, heroes and villains. None of these three was bad, nor were they particularly good. She need not judge. There did not have to be a moral."

I guess it was because in the modern era, the world was shrinking and bringing people together, that people began to have a more comprehensive and complicated understanding of others through increasing interactions. They came to realize that, good men could make mistakes, and bad people were not denied the right to have a kind heart. One person cannot be described simply as "good" or "bad". That's why guilt "was cheap." Guilt is not the privilege of a handful of "bad people"; everyone was guilty, to some degree. Yet, no one was a completely evil person.

However, the increasing number and scale of cities might not necessarily foster interactions; it might only bring observations. Several years ago, whether to help old people who fell down on the streets rose a heated debate in China, given that the fallen old people might accuse you of pushing and hurting them as soon as you landed your hands on them, and ask for compensation. Attracted by the accusation, passengers would gather around and judge the good and evil, soon the kind-hearted was misunderstood and had no way to prove himself. Under the pressure of being accused of disrespecting the old, one good man might eventually pay for his "misbehavior" as the result of having a kind soul. Lots of people retreated from helping since then, not wanting to cause any unnecessary trouble or misunderstanding to themselves, the whole society seemed cold and indifferent.

I guess the detachment and mistrust upset the people in the modern era, too. Not to mention in war. "The witnesses were guilty too. All day we've witnessed each other's crimes. You killed no one today? But how many did you leave to die?" Robbie was really suffering from not being able to get involved, to help, to rescue, to save a life. War left him few choices and little room. But we as the readers who live in a peaceful time might have a choice to go beyond being witnesses.