论文总字数：27739字

摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 A brief introduction to the author and Atonement 1

1.2 Need of the study 2

2. Literature Review 4

2.1 Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure 4

2.2 Previous research on Atonement 5

3. Briony’s Self-atonement from the Perspective of Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure 4

3.1 Id: Briony’s libido 7

3.2 Ego: Briony’s struggle 8

3.3 Superego: Briony’s self-atonement 10

4. Conclusion 12

References 13

Acknowledgments

When I was writing this thesis, a number of people provided me valuable help, including my supervisor, my friends and my parents.

First, I would love to give my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Qiu Liping, who has offered me great help in selecting topic, writing thesis and providing reliable online resources. Her professional knowledge, rigorous academic attitude, excelsior work style, strict self-discipline and easy-going personality charm had positive impact on me. Therefore, Prof. Qiu gave me precious instructions in my thesis writing as well as far-reaching influence on my thought and life.

Next, my gratitude should be given to the professors in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature in Nanjing Tech University. They shared their academic knowledge, broadened horizon and profound thinking with us, which created a great academic atmosphere for me, so that my paper could be more rigorous.

Then, I feel like giving my appreciation to my true friends. When I had no idea about how to continue to write the thesis, they brainstormed with me together. Without their support, the paper would have been harder to accomplish.

Last but not least, special thanks should be given to my beloved parents for their great confidence in me. They always gave me their best and provided a good atmosphere and safe environment, especially during this paper writing process that when the Coronavirus broke out. They contributed a lot to the paper.

Abstract

Ian McEwan is one of the most influential writers in contemporary English literature. Since his work, Atonement, came out in 2001, it has been widely discussed by the academic circles. Taking the history of World War II as the macro background, Atonement tells the story of a reckless lie Briony makes up in adolescence, which ultimately affects the fate of three characters, including herself. Suffering from her inward struggle for many years, Briony finally chooses to self-atone. On the basis of the three parts of Freud's Theory of Personality Structure, this paper analyzes Briony's psychological growth from id driven by lust to ego’s awakening, and then to superego that takes the initiative to take the road of self-atonement, and finds out the basic reasons for her to embark on the road of self-atonement. This paper is expected to help readers have a new understanding of Atonement and raise people's attention to the cultivation of personality.

Keywords: Atonement; Ian McEwan; Theory of Personality Structure; Briony; self-atonement

中文摘要

伊恩·麦克尤恩是英国当代文坛最有影响力的作家之一。他的作品《赎罪》自2001年问世后便得到了学界的广泛关注。《赎罪》以二战历史为宏观背景，讲述了主人公布里奥妮在青春期时冒失说出口的一个谎言，最终影响了包括她在内三个人的命运，也使其自身饱受内心煎熬多年，最终选择进行自我救赎的故事。本文以弗洛伊德人格结构理论的三大组成部分作为切入点，分析了主人公布里奥妮从受私欲驱使的"本我"到"自我"觉醒，再到主动走上赎罪道路的"超我"的心理成长过程，揭示了主人公布里奥妮走上自我救赎之路的根本原因，旨在帮助读者对《赎罪》构建新的认识，提高人们对人格培养的关注。

关键词：《赎罪》；伊恩·麦克尤恩；人格结构理论；布里奥妮；自我救赎

1. Introduction

• 1. A brief introduction to the author and Atonement

Known as one of the most influential writers in the contemporary British literature, Ian Russell McEwan was born into an ordinary naval family. His father, a male chauvinist, held the notion that study is useless, however, cultivated Ian’s desire for reading and writing. He gradually found himself love the theme of humanity and social phenomena and made them matter in his own creation. The reason why Ian McEwan devoted himself to writing novels about the theme of war, crime and human nature lies in the fact that his gloomy wandering adolescence. He lived in North Africa until 11 years old and often transformed one school to another, which made him lonely because of few friends.

Ian McEwan published several well-known novels such as First Love, Last Rites, Sweet Tooth, The Child in Time, Amsterdam and so on. Atonement is one of his masterpieces, which is also a climax of his writing career. The above books win him many awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Book Award, the Man Booker Prize, etc.

Ian McEwan always intends to write a novel to salute to Jane Austen. As a result, Atonement published after nearly ten years of polishing. Two representative symbols in Austen’s works, romantic love story and class hindrance, also appears in McEwan’s Atonement. However, Atonement is not a typical love story. It analyzes the dark side of humanity based on the character’s personality. The novel is divided into three parts.

The first part is set in the English manor in the summer of 1935. Precocious and sensitive 13-year-old Briony finds the special relationship between the maid’s son, Robbie, and her elder sister, Cecilia. Soon after, Briony accidentally witnesses them engaging in sexual acts. However, Briony who is ignorant of sex misunderstands that Robbie is behaving aggressively to Cecelia. Robbie’s image collapses in Briony’s eyes because she has a crush on him originally. So, Briony deliberately identifies Robbie as the criminal in the subsequent rape case. Then Robbie is jailed.

The second part is set by the time World War II started. Robbie is released after enlisting in the army. Cecilia believes that Robbie is innocent, cutting off all contact with her family and becoming a nurse. They still love each other while Briony becomes a trainee nurse instead of studying in Cambridge because of the uneasiness of her conscience. In June, 1940, she finds them in Balham and wants to apologize to them and clear Robbie’s name. Since the victim of the rape case rejects to testify against the real rapist, there’s nothing Briony can do. Finally, Briony has not been forgiven by the young couple.

The third part comes to 1999. Old Briony, who has become a successful novelist, who tells readers the real ending of Robbie and Cecilia. In fact, the scene in which she confesses to them is imagined, because Robbie died of septicemia in 1940 during the Dunkirk evacuations and Cecilia was killed by the bomb in Balham Underground Station in September of the same year. Briony only has an opportunity to atone for the rest of her life and create Robbie and Cecilia a happy ending in her novel. Briony says that “as long as there is a single copy, a solitary typescript of my final draft, then my spontaneous, fortuitous sister and her medical prince survive to love” (McEwan, 2007: 333). She also wants the readers acquire hope and content according to the fictional ending.

1.2 Need of the study

Reviewing the previous researches on Ian McEwan’s Atonement, I find that the research based on Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure has not received enough attention. Although Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure has been applied in literary analysis for a long time, few scholars have analyzed Atonement in depth. With the further study of Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure, it can easily find that the development of the heroine’s personality goes well with it. Therefore, there is a need for an attempt to complement the research of personality structure on Atonement, which is expected to provide a new way to interpret Briony’s mental process from evildoing to self-atonement as well as her personality growth. By the analysis based

on Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure, the characters become more reasonable and more vivid. The readers can clearly know the reason why she always seems to be in a state of indecision and conflict and chooses self-atonement at last. Owing to the balance among id, ego and superego, a sound personality can be shaped.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure

The Theory of Personality Structure was put forward by the famous psychologist, Sigmund Freud. Personality is regarded as a psychological mechanism to control a person’s behavior from their inside and it can determine one’s behavior characteristic and patterns in all given situations. Zhao (1992) points out that in the early 1900s, Freud classified it as three different parts, namely, id, ego and superego, which refers to Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure.

Every individual is born with id. It includes human basic needs and desires, such as hunger, thirst and sex. Id demands immediate satisfaction of desire instead of consideration of morality, which can make people gain happiness through relieving the pain or tension. People may behave according to their pleasure.

Ego is generated by the development of the id. Since people can’t meet their desires whenever and wherever possible in reality, they have to accommodate various constraints and learn how to satisfy their needs in another feasible way. In other words, people behave by the restriction of reality.

Superego is a moralized ego and is gradually formed by receiving the education of moral standards. It can make people set a goal for themselves and keep working hard. That is to say, people behave with their conscience and personal ideal.

These three always interact with each other. Id is at the mercy of the latter two, superego is at the highest level of personality and ego is the balance between them. Ego needs to seek for things that id demands while it must make sure the thing won’t violate superego’s principles. As long as ego’s imbalance, personality structure is easy to be imperfect, which leads to a series of adverse consequences.

In the past century, Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure has been applied not only in neuroscience or psychology but also in humanities. For example, the theory is crucial in education. It has even become one of the theoretical bases in the examination of teachers’ qualification certificate. In addition, Zhao (2004) believes

that Freud’s theory can be used for reference in the study of human moral development, individual moral personality and the evolution of human social morality and it also plays a vital role in revealing social moral problems and promoting moral constructions. Besides, more and more literature researchers do some study based on Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure, especially the researches of novels. It can help people analyze the characters better and interpret the novel from different angles.

2.2 Previous research on Atonement

Ian McEwan’s medium-term works focus on history, war, politics, morality and other serious topics. Atonement’s topic is one of the above. The story revolves around the main character, Briony’s self-atonement. The artful storytelling method makes the novel very popular and becomes one of his most well-known works. It was named by Time as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time in 2005. It has also attracted the research of many literature lovers.

Foreign scholars have paid attention to Atonement earlier and their research direction covers various fields. Finney (2004) analyzes the narrative technique of stream of consciousness in Atonement, and holds that the novel aims to discuss how to write a novel. Hidalgo (2005) finds the intertextuality of Atonement, which increases the artistry and depth of the content. For instance, Atonement’s main character, Briony Tallis, recalls Catherine Morland who is the heroine of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey due to their imperfect knowledge of the world. The country house of Atonement’s first part makes inevitable association with Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Atonement’s dinner scene reminds readers of the long dinner party in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Harold (2005) judges that narrative imagination is dynamic and multipolar rather than static or unified, because it manipulates imprecise language skillfully through the complex connection between knowledge and morality. Fraser (2013) considers that the prominent feature of Atonement is to review the class conflict in the miniature of British society through the characters in the army and nursing college before World War II.

Owing to being adapted into a hit movie, the book becomes popular worldwide. More and more Chinese scholars started to study Atonement as well. From the perspective of Feminism, Pan (2009) feels Briony’s bravery by her protection of her sibling and her independence and autonomy by her endless writing. The writing background of Atonement is related to the moral and ethical crisis in British society in 1990s. Hypocrisy can be seen from private life to government activities. Social ethical and moral standards become empty words. Hu (2014) thinks that Ian McEwan is good at unreliable narration. Readers can feel that the narrator’s lack of reliability through the contradiction between the fact and narrator’s words. In Atonement, the author compares young Briony’s testimony in the rape case with old Briony’s account of the fact. On one hand, it indirectly mocks the selfishness of British upper-class society and the prejudice against the class origin. On the other hand, it provides readers with endless space for imagination. From the perspective of growth theory, Geng (2014) regards Atonement as a typical novel of initiation, which describes the growth experience of teenagers. Briony’s lifetime points out another way to grow, that is, to admit the disadvantages in human nature, to face one’s mistake bravely and fix it in time.

3. Briony’s Self-atonement from the Perspective of Freud’s Theory of Personality Structure

3.1 Id: Briony’s libido

Our whole psychological activity seems to be determined to seek for happiness and avoid pain, and it is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle (Freud, 1984). Id has a kind of strong impetuous energy to let people behave according to their wants. Those desires in people’s most inner heart originate from their id. For example, people’s subconscious behaviors like love and desire for control.

The novel opens in Tallises’ manor, where Briony just finishes writing her play in two days and begs her mother to read. She is only 13 but indulges in literary creation. The play named The Trials of Arabella tells a simple romantic story. The heroine, Arabella, elopes with her lover without her families’ permission. As a punishment, she had cholera and was deserted by everyone. Then, fate brings her a doctor who is actually a prince. At this time, she makes the right choice to get married with the doctor prince. Finally, she is cured and becomes reconciled with her families, holding a wedding ceremony on “a windy sunlit day in spring.”

In McEwan’s Atonement, Briony seems to have a natural gift for writing, which can gather all her daydreams to build a fictional perfect world owned by herself. She even indulges in the fantasy that her elder brother shows off her to his friends because of her writing talent. Besides, she wants to play the role of Arabella more than reading the aside. All the above shows Briony’s libido of showing off.

Also, from The Trial of Arabella, it is easy to see Briony’s girlish thoughts. For one thing, she dreams about prince and princess’ love story. For another, she insists on the “order” in her minds. For example, she disagrees with irrational love and support that people should marry into their own class. She deems that marriage is a gift to good people and evil always leads to evil. The reason why she is fascinated with writing is that she can make her “order” exist in her stories. As a sensitive teenage girl who has few people understand her, Briony gets happiness through writing constantly.

As the story develops, Robbie recalls her seemingly childish confession and all the writer’s subtle expressions about Robbie from Briony’s perspective, we know all Briony’s strange behaviors are on account of her love of Robbie. Also, the author describes that Robbie Turner wants to learn medicine instead of gardening, when we relate the hint with his’s long-term attraction to Briony, we can find the indication that the doctor prince in The Trial of Arabella is based on Robbie, which point out that Briony has a crush on him for a long time.

Id includes impulsion by nature while ego and superego are given the power of control id. In Atonement, Briony cannot restrain her love for Robbie. Meanwhile, she cannot control her desire to destroy him. The above desires are on account of her id, which proves that Briony’s personality structure is more likely to her id.

3.2 Ego: Briony’s struggle

Briony’s feelings cannot be understood at first because at the beginning of the story, she looks like a bystander. She is a well-educated girl from the British upper class. The education she received tells her that she should not fall in love with a poor boy. However, love catches Briony by surprise.

In the second part, when Robbie is in the cruel war, waiting for the retreat, he calls up some memories. In the summer of 1932, 10-year-old Briony jumps into the river deliberately, only for making Robbie save her. As long as Robbie risks his life to save her, Briony has an illusion in her immature mind that he loves her. Although Robbie saves her immediately, he doesn’t associate it with a young girl’s crush at that time and continues to treat Briony as a little sister, which point out that Briony’s feeling has no response for a long time. And Robbie and Cecilia’s relationship becomes the last straw. The ignorance in love makes Briony an active volcano, which may explode any time. When she saw the relationship between Robbie and Cecilia, she feels betrayed, jealousy and angry. Those feelings brought by her unsatisfied id provoke Briony into testifying Robbie as a criminal deliberately in the rape case. That is the reason why Briony gives evidence against Robbie in 1935. The feeling of being

ignored and betrayed provides her a precipitate decision to destroy Robbie. Ridiculously, when Robbie finally understands that Briony’s behavior is because of her crush on him, he can only feel Briony’s childishness instead of falling in love with her.

Changing from love to hate happens at whim. When Briony sees the rape case in the dim light, she assumes that the criminal is Robbie beyond question. The main impetus is the temporary destructiveness at that moment while the true reason is her accumulated resentments. Those resentments originate from her long-restrained emotions, the romantic involvement between Robbie and her sister as well as Robbie’s long-term neglect. Briony tells a lie that Robbie rapes their cousin and then invents more and more details to make the lie plausible. Afterwards, a young girl’s oral testimony is accepted by almost all the people, including the police. They arrest Robbie without hesitation. It can reflect the significant importance of the class at that time. No one pays any attention to a guy who comes from the lower class. In other words, Robbie is wronged hastily because those upper-class people don’t want to offend their fellow’s interests. The young girl doesn’t know what she brings to the young couple. After Robbie’s arrest and her sister’s fury, Briony feels anxious. For the sake of her conscience, she deceives herself that what she has done is just a method to protect her sister from being hurt by a dangerous poor guy.

In actual life, behaving according to id is completely unrealistic. When people feels hungry in the supermarket, they don’t eat a bar of chocolate immediately. Instead, they will resist hunger and go to the checkout line. If they have no money, they may resist hunger and go back home to cook something. This means people in today’s society understand how to control their id. They know the suitable way to meet id or give up id temporarily. Even to this day, it is universally acknowledged that British society is rigidly stratified, let alone in the 1930s. The difference between their social classes, ages and experiences leads to Briony’s depressed love for Robbie. That is to say, ego controls her to behave by the social ethics. She vents her emotions into constant writing because she can fulfill her dreams in her works. It also lays the basis for the self-atonement method in her later years.

When the story develops to here, Briony has been wandering up and down between id and ego. To some extent, she is still in a state of relative balance. However, when she saw the dubious relationship between her sister and Robbie, jealousy makes her angry immediately. Ego makes her silent for a while but id takes priority over her ego soon after. She chooses to tell a piece of lie to express her immediate displeasure. Id’s impulsion results in her desperate behavior. As time goes on, the id’s energy is vented while her conscience is tortured.

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