Powerful Words

“I’ll wait for you. Come back.” As Robby is shoved into the cop car, Cecilia passionately says these words after her newfound lover is wrongly accused of raping her cousin. These words inevitably help Robby get through the coming years as he faces hardships in the war. Words like these have immense power over people. If someone is passionate about what they are talking about, others will follow. This power of words has been used by many leaders throughout history, like when Adolf Hitler united Germany, which was in shambles from the first world war. This power of words is also used in Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement, as character’s lives seem to change drastically by mere words, yet by taking a deeper look, one can see that the power of these words is not strong enough to completely control the character’s lives. 

    The power of words is first shown in Robby’s letter to Cecilia, where he accidentally gives her a letter with some very flirtatious things in it. By giving these profane words to Cecilia via letter, he is able to completely change his relationship with Cecilia. The relationship, which was very awkward and uncomfortable, turns to one that is very sexual very quickly. The words written to Cecilia seem to have sparked a love that would have never been possible due to the social status of the two people, yet by looking deeper, one can see that the words are not quite powerful enough to do this. Their relationship still has the disconnect that the characters have with each other throughout the book, for when they meet for the second time, it continues to be awkward as they do not carry the conversation. Instead, they find all their love in the physical actions, showing that this so called “love” that they find is simply youthful lust. 

    The deliverer of the letter that held in the lust of the two people also was able to drastically affect the lives of those around her with the power of her words. After being taken over by the false idea that Robby was a maniac who went around raping people, she wrongly accuses him of raping Lola, causing him to be arrested and to eventually go into the army. By telling a story, which in this case was total fiction, she was not only able to completely rewrite Robby’s fate, but also Cecilia’s, for she decided she could not live with her family if they did this to her and her so called love. Although these words had the power to control Robby’s life at the time of the rape, these words once again were not strong enough to last forever. When Cecilia and Briony meet later, Cecilia says Briony will change her evidence, completely taking the power away from the words, undermining the words to simply false things stated about Robby, and in turn amplifying the will for Briony to atone for her wrongdoings. When she realizes that she was wrong about the rapist, Briony attempts to atone for completely changing Robby’s life, showing that words have little power over others. 

The aftermath of Briony’s mistakes leads to a situation that shows the power of words keeping someone alive. When Robby is sent to war, he continues to read the letters sent from Cecilia. Robby is able to hear Cecilia speaking the letters in his head, and he uses this as inspiration to survive the war. The words of Cecilia have the power to keep Robby alive in one of the toughest situations, yet once again are not strong enough to continue forever. After getting to the beach and fighting his way through the bombings and destroyed land, he is unable to hear the voice anymore as he realizes that he and Cecilia were really nothing, and he dies. If the words really had power, he would have survived the war, but the separation between the characters overpowers the words, turning the words that kept Robby alive into merely ink on paper. 

Throughout the novel, characters words seem to have power over other characters, whether they are false testimonies or written love letters. When taking a deeper look, however, one can see that other things have more power over words. When the words are not strong enough to continue, the characters realize that they were wrong, leading to atonement or other actions, shown by Briony’s atonement and Robby’s reliving of the war to talk to the people who died. The novel shows that the power of words is nothing compared to the power of actions.