Paige PerryMr. LarsenAP Lit and Comp, May 3, 2014 “But what was the guilt these days,” Robbie asks at one point. “It was cheap. Everyone was guilty and no one." There is no disguise on the main theme of Atonement, you can see it in the title. This novel examines what creates the context for guilt and how to atone for it. The connections between the beginning and end of Atonement contribute to the theme by providing. At the beginning of Atonement, the narrator is assumed to be an anonymous, objective third person, but the trick of the novel is that it is always Briony's reflection on what happened. . By the end of the first part of the novel, the reader has come to judge her harshly. At the end of the book Briony calls her twelve-year-old self “the busy, stuck-up, presumptuous little girl.” In an attempt to achieve atonement, she portrays herself in a negative light throughout the novel, only to reveal that she was the one narrating the story. It is here, at the end of the novel, when the narration switches to the first person, that the reader realizes that Briony is the narrator.. ...