In what ways is this an apt name for Briony’s character? Base your answers on evidence from the text.

What is in a name? A name represents a person and distinguishes an individual from society. Throughout Atonement, McEwan has further developed the significance of a name, by shrewdly using the literary technique of aptronyms. This technique is continually portrayed through the character Briony, seeing as her name foreshadows the forthcoming and depicts aspects of her persona.

Briony’s imagination is ceaselessly growing and expanding to new heights. Ironically, Briony’s name means vine, a plant, which relentlessly grows around the trucks of trees. Both Briony and the vine, use growth to reach new heights and attain more maturity. “Briony could not have been held back from her writing”. As this quotation suggests, when Briony’s imagination has been set wild, nothing can come between her and her desires, even though she is young and naive. Much like Briony, a vine can be primarily considered as young, seeing as it merely appears to be a plant with a weak stem. However, simular to Briony, it aspiration is to grow. Though it is weak, it derives its support from climbing, twining and creeping along a surface, until it reaches the light.

Vines climb to reach sunlight. As a consequence the vines destroy anything that crosses their pathway. For instance, if a branch comes between the vine and sunlight, it will ultimately snap the branch and continue climbing. Without a doubt Briony’s name portrays her characters conduct. McEwan has made his character Briony, inhabit a ‘social climbing’ trait. This means that Briony becomes acquaintances with people who can provide her with something she desires, so that she can ultimately seek social prominence. McEwan depicts this through Briony’s submissiveness to Leon, a male whom is older than herself and who has attended Cambridge. This is also revealed through her dominance towards her cousins, who posses a lower status than herself. When Briony refers to them as “her cousins from the distant north’, she is advocating that her cousins exact whereabouts is unknown. Moreover, vines are unrestrained and hastily ascend up a tree to reach the top of the canopy. This swift climbing and smothering of the vine, can weaken the supporting tree and eventually bring the tree to its decease. “Lola, who was fifteen, and the nine-year-old twins, Jackson and Pierrot, were refugees from a bitter domestic civil war” Briony primarily perceives her cousins as lower class and status, this is particularly emphasized when she uses the word ‘domestic’ and ‘refugees’, to describe their past. Once again, the reader can see Briony’s vast imagination, melodramatise the truth about her cousins from reality. It is obvious that Briony assumes that her cousins cannot provide her with anything, apart from being submissive and obedient puppets in her play. Like a vine, she exploits her cousins to fulfil her own personal desires. “She vaguely knew that divorce was an affliction, but she did not regard it as a proper subject, and gave it no thought. It was a mundane unravelling that could not be reversed, and therefore offered no opportunities to the storyteller.” Before Briony has even been introduced to her cousins, she is trying to compose a story, based on the history of the family. When she realizes her cousins cannot offer her a story, she oppresses them and seeks authority. However, when Briony is presented with Lola rape account, she immediately begins to smother Lola until she has attained adequate information to form a tale. Both Briony and vines need to find a source to which allows them to grow. For a vine this is a trunk, whereas for Briony this is a person whom she can use to become one step closer to her dreams.

Though a vine has the ability to climb, it must compromise to the hindrance of possessing a weak stem. Without support, the vine cannot grow to its full potential and will essentially decease because it cannot attain sunlight to live. Briony constantly needs the comfort and attention of the people around her, to gain confidence and to seek the attention she thrives on. “Even without their attention and praise and obvious pleasure, Briony could not have been held back from her writing”. Though McEwan is denying that Briony’s continuous development of her writing is self-derived, it is contradictory because she still confides her relative’s opinions on her works. If Briony were confident about her stories, disclosure would prove to be unnecessary. “Briony studied her mother’s face for every shifting emotion”. The word ‘studied’ emphasises the extent to which Briony cares about her mother opinion. Once again McEwan challenges whether Briony is truly self-motivated to continue to pursue writing or whether she needs the support of those around her. Ironically, when Briony is and elderly women, she is alone and isolated. Without the continuous support of those around her, which allows her to grow her imagination, status and develop stories, she happens attains Alzheimer’s disease. This primarily makes her forget memories and weakens her mind. This is similar concept to that of a vine because when it reaches the top of a tree and attains sunlight and the trunk that supports it weakens and dies, which leaves the vines with nothing but decease.

McEwan has either intentionally or inadvertently intertwined the meaning of Briony’s name into her characters behaviours in Atonement. The concept that her name means vine, can be connected to several aspects of personality, considering that the essential function of both a vine and Briony is growth and maturity.