How Does Mcewan's Use Of Setting In Atonement

In what ways does Ian McEwan’s use of setting reinforce the central ideas of Atonement?
Ian McEwan spends a great deal of time describing the setting his characters inhabit. The descriptions are so in depth and thoughtful that the houses and buildings almost become characters in their own rights. This attention to detail comes from McEwan’s use of setting in reinforcing the central themes of Atonement, such as love, pretence and order and chaos. Although he used many techniques, descriptive language, personification and intertextuality, to convey his ideas, it is the use of setting that reinforces those far beyond what the other techniques achieved.
A significant portion of Atonement takes place in and around the Tallis’ house. The appearance of the house is explored in great detail at the beginning of the book – built in place of a mansion but referred to as ‘charmless to a …show more content…
The Tallis family home was written to be an ugly, practical home as a mockery of a mansion. In the same way, the Tallis’ were a mockery of a family. They pretended at having a history and solidarity of household but they came nowhere close. A hospital represents a place of order and it is in this that Briony finds her needs for order fulfilled. However, the order of the hospital only holds until the chaos of war reaches it’s doors and infiltrates the structured halls. Briony find that, like her life, the order she craved was only a thin barricade against a chaotic world that easily strips away all that she had struggled to maintain. The love, and hidden love, of Robbie and Cecilia was reflected through the apartment they shared. The lonely exterior, accompanied by the little details opening up a greater story is a mirror image of the start of their story together. McEwan cleverly uses the setting of his novel to reinforce the central ideas of Atonement and it is this technique that adds so much depth and significance to the story and