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The Attempt Was All – the theme of memory in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

Publication at Faculty of Education |
2009

Abstract

This article focuses on the treatment of the theme of memory and recollection of the past in Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement (2001). As its theoretical point of departure it refers to selected studies by David Lowenthal and Linda Hutcheon.

The main aim is to show the originality with which McEwan explores the theme by employing narrative strategies of multiple perspectives, periphery of vision and fragmentary moments. It argues that the force of the combination of the latter two strategies derives from the fact that the narrative itself resembles the very process of recollection.