On Atonement

This paper reads Atonement by Ian McEwan through the interwoven theological motifs of Yom Kippur, Christian sacrificial atonement, and Briony’s imaginative self-redemption. It argues that McEwan destabilizes traditional notions of sin, guilt, and repentance by foregrounding narrative unreliability and moral ambiguity. Drawing on Elizabeth Loftus, René Girard, and biblical hermeneutics, the paper contends that McEwan negates transcendence within a Darwinian framework where sin becomes a hermeneutical construct rather than metaphysical reality. Ultimately, Atonement emerges as a novel about narration itself, exposing atonement as both aesthetic illusion and epistemological uncertainty. This was written in some hurry for students during the Covid pandemic.