WRITING AS REPARATION: BIOGRAPHICAL TRAUMA WRITING IN IAN MCEWAN’S ATONEMENT.

Abstract

This article aims to analyze biographical trauma writing in Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001). In this novel, the narrator and protagonist Briony Tallis decides to become a nurse during The Second World War, as some kind of personal penance. Her auto fictional writing, nonetheless, reveals a possibility to repair her past trauma. The text addresses, more remarkably, the therapeutic properties of autobiographical fiction writing, having as references current assumptions both on trauma theory and life-writing.