Atonement

April 6, 2006 6:18 AM

Later today I'm teaching a class on Ian McEwan's Atonement. I'd like to juxtapose the extremely complex kind of atonement depicted in this novel with other, structurally simpler stories of atonement. Any ideas?

Most of the other atonement-related stories and novels that come to my mind are very complex: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lord Jim, Disgrace, and so on. What I'm looking for are far more straightforward, even archetypal versions of the same. Something from the Bible, or from classical mythology, for example. Person A kills Person B's brother--and then performs Herculean deeds to make it up to Person B, etc.

I know these stories are out there--but for some reason I'm coming up blank. Any ideas out there in AskMe-land?

posted by josh to media & arts (7 comments total)

David Kaczynski
posted by bim at 6:36 AM on April 6, 2006

Maybe Scott Waddle
posted by bim at 6:48 AM on April 6, 2006

The Mission
posted by glibhamdreck at 8:08 AM on April 6, 2006

The Necklace
posted by hilker at 10:31 AM on April 6, 2006

My Name Is Earl.
posted by sad_otter at 11:33 AM on April 6, 2006

Bim, I ended up using your two, plus Tookie Williams -- thanks very much everyone!
posted by josh at 2:02 PM on April 6, 2006

Not exactly what you're looking for, buy you may find Speaker for the Dead interesting. In this sequel to Ender's Game, the protagonist atones for the events of the first book - the necessary evil of commiting genocide on an invading, intelligent race. Fascinating to me me because Ender never regrets killing the enemy (in the sense that he'd undo his actions), but does regret that it was necessary and feels compelled to atone for it anyway. Not so far off from bim's first suggestion, actually.

Two books long to get the whole story so not appropriate for your class but something you may want to take a look at for yourself.
posted by zanni at 4:36 PM on April 6, 2006