Blog Post 3-Atonement Part 1

Upon reading the first part of Atonement, I found the characters’ viewpoint of divorce to be quite interesting. Divorce is mentioned throughout due to Briony’s cousins’ parents being in the process of one, hence why they have to move in with her. Specifically, on page 54 we witness an upset Jackson utter, ‘We can’t go home anyway…It’s a divorce!” This is then followed by a pissed Lola yelling at him, ‘How dare you say that…you will never ever use that word again. D’you hear me?’ (McEwan 56). It is clear that this divorce affects all of the children, which is understandable, although it appears to have a greater effect on them then how divorce affects children today. As a child of divorce myself, I definitely find it both reasonable and expected to be highly upset, however, being unable to even hear the word represents how drastically different the prevalence of divorce is nowadays compared to when this book takes place. Before our time those who decided to split from their partner would be ostracized by society, yet now it is almost just expected that one’s parents could potentially divorce each other. Obviously, kids today also get overcome with sadness upon hearing the news that their parents are going to split, but it seems as though the children we are reading about have never even seen a divorced family due to their wish to completely ignore the fact that it is happening to them. It is also odd that Lola would be upset about her brother even mentioning the word because from personal experience divorce seems to usually bring children together in the modern world. In addition, in today’s society when parents decide to part ways usually one of the parents simply moves out yet in Atonement the children are forced to move in with their cousins due to the divorce. This was odd to me because that is not usually how it goes anymore, and I wonder why this would be the case in this time period. Obviously, everyone and every family handles divorce differently, but the ways that we see in this book just don’t seem to be very existent anymore. So, now I am left with the question: is this because of the time period or does this family just have the strangest dynamic ever?