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Summary A* AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE PART B CRIME WRITING - COMPARISON OF ATONEMENT AND POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2020 Guilt is its own punishment; it tortures those who have to live with it.’$6.11
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Summary A* AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE PART B CRIME WRITING - COMPARISON OF ATONEMENT AND POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2020 Guilt is its own punishment; it tortures those who have to live with it.’
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Course
Elements of Crime Writing
Institution
AQA
A* AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE PART B CRIME WRITING - COMPARISON OF ATONEMENT AND POETRY ANTHOLOGY
2020 Guilt is its own punishment; it tortures those who have to live with it.’
2020 Guilt is its own punishment; it tortures
those who have to live with it.ʼ Explore the
significance of guilt in two crime texts you
have studied. Remember to include in your
answer relevant detailed exploration of
authorial methods. [25 marks]
2020
Guilt is its own punishment; it tortures those who have to live with it.ʼ Explore the significance of
guilt in two crime texts you have studied. Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed
exploration of authorial methods. [25 marks]
Atonement and Poetry Anthology
Atonement being yearsʼ worth of guilt manufactured into a novel.
Representation of guilt in Peter Grimes.
Lack of guilt exhibited by Paul Marshall.
Throughout centuries, crime fiction has explored the theme of guilt representing it as a
devastating psychological consequence of a crime committed. In Atonement, the titular criminal
Briony Tallis constructs the novel as a physical manifestation of her guilt over decades, in
juxtaposition to the novels shadowy criminal Paul Marshall who does not appear to feel any guilt
for his crimes. In the Poetry Collection, there is a similar depiction of guilt by the end of Peter
Grimes alongside lack of guilt in Browningʼs poetry which creates conflicting presentations of
the theme. In this essay I will therefore discuss to what extent ‘guilt is its own punishment as it
tortures those who have to live with itʼ.
As Briony steps forward as the novels author in the ‘London 1999ʼ part stating, “There was our
crime – Lolaʼs, Marshallʼs, mine”, the inclusive pronoun “our” creates a guilty sense of complicity
within Briony who casts herself as just as guilty as Paul Marshall whose victim was “prised open
and taken” against her will. Her guilt is exemplified in the very manifestation of it which is the
novel of Atonement she describes as being her “fifty-nine-year assignment” in “an attempt to
win back the love of a sister who died in WWII”, as stated by critics. The misunderstanding
which occurred in the height of the 1935 summer seems to have chased her for decades as an
accumulation of guilt which led to Briony attempting to rewrite the story of Robbie “who died of
septicaemia at Bray Dunes” and Cecilia who “was killed in September of the same year by the
bomb at destroyed Balham Underground” so that they are still alive by the end of the novel.
However, there appears to be a sense of poetic injustice is this form of atonement by Briony as
it was the same misunderstanding of Cecilia and Robbieʼs relationships which led to her
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