1st Person Narration in Atonement and Number9Dream

Narrative Analysis: First Assessed Essay
Candidate 316773
Module Title Narrative Analysis
Module Tutor Carmen Coulthard & Malcom Coulthard
Question How is point of view handled in text or texts of your choice?

Consider Perspective and Voice (who perceives the action, who
reports it?) Describe your text in terms of Narrative levels and
narrators – how many are there and how are they signalled in the
discourse?
Title Narrators As Characters In Two Psychological Novels Of 2001
MHRA Citation
3352 Words
Candidate 316773 First Narrative Analysis Assessed Essay: Narrators as Characters in Two
Psychological Novels of 2001
December/January 2002
Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological

Novels of 2001
Introduction
This essay will examine point of view in extracts from Ian McEwan’s Atonement and
David Mitchell’s Number 9 Dream (both reproduced here as appendixes). It aims to
disprove formalist ideas of character as a ‘function’ of plot (Chatman 1978, 111) by
demonstrating instead that plot can serve as a function of character. Three strategies
will be identified, in which point of view constructs the narrator as a character:
• In both extracts the perception and reporting of story events overshadows the
events themselves.
• The narrator’s perspective normally aligns the reader with a focalised
character (in Number 9 Dream the narrator himself). Sometimes, however, it
invites the reader to read against the focalised/narrator’s discourse, to discover
what this character is ‘really’ like.
• Both extracts contain several narrative layers, the ‘deepest’ of which is purely
a form of characterisation, narrativising personality traits.
Diagrams of narrative levels (Figs 1&2) and narrative elements (Figs 3&4) are
produced at the end of the essay to demonstrate these points.
1 The Significance of Point of View

1.1 Perception and Reporting in Number9Dream: First Person Discourse
Every event in Number9Dream is reported from the perspective of Eiji Miyake’s
spatiotemporally1 limited observations, and this reporting serves a characterisation
function. Under of Simpon’s typology of narrative modes, the extract is in positively
modalised A Form (first person narration). Eiji controls his own story as indicated by
deontic and boulomaic modality: “What Tokyo needs is a good flooding” (88), “she
has the most perfect neck in all creation” (49). He even explains the (supposed)
relevance of his narrative: “today is one of those life-changing days” (73). From this
2
‘limited’ perspective Eiji is more fully characterised by analeptic traces in his FDT.
We infer that he does not know who his father is from his comment that the rest of the
public “know who ushered them on to Earth” (33). The obvious orientating function
of Eiji’s diegesis does not, however, prevent an extremely strong sense of mimesis
being created through the immediacy of this first person orientation.
This immediacy is created by the dominance of Free Direct Thought2. The
form is rarer in novels than indirect thought (IT) as it professes to a verbatim
knowledge of a character’s thoughts, but this is exactly the effect required here,
aligning the reader to Eiji’s direct perceptions in the present tense, as though he or she
were ‘really there’3. The inevitable distortions caused by indirect thought’s selection
process are eliminated. This technique is supported by the almost exclusive reporting
of speech in a free direct form, in which the framing clause is ellipted. Characters
speak without the narrator as an intermediary. Events maintain a more natural
chronology where a framing clause would slow down text pace. On the surface text
duration appears to be ‘scene’, but since Eiji lights a cigarette in sentence 27 and
“entombs” it by sentence 46 there must be some summary. If anything, this
demonstrates the arbitrariness of any relationship between text time and ‘ideal natural
chronology’ when a reader decodes text4 (see Toolan 2001, 43).
The closeness of reader-alignment to the narrator is heightened by the use of
the ‘close’ deictic adverb here rather than the more remote adverbial there (six
instances to three):
It would be so much simpler if you would just drop by here for a sandwich (35)
‘Is there a machine in here?’ (507)
while I stand here nitpicking with you, I got ninety angel-fish at the
Metropolitan City Office in danger of asphyxiation (176)
Had a hell of time getting in here, y’know (222)
you burst in here, expecting to intimidate me (284)
‘Security will be here within thirty seconds.’ (307)
The last four instances are taken from Eiji’s imagined adventure, demonstrating that
this close alignment is retained even when he is the imagined subject of an embedded
narrative layer. This directly contrasts Atonement’s third-person strategy, in which a
greater mix of direct and indirect reporting means that exceptional narrative shifts are
made when Briony becomes focaliser. In this more ‘distanced’ account there are as
many instances of the adverbial there as here (two of each):
3
in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the
grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept a diary locked by a
clasp (23)
Briony felt suddenly ashamed . . . [she] struggled to grasp the difficult thought,
wasn't there manipulation here . . . now her play seemed a miserable,
embarrassing thing” (140-145)
The first instance is pure narration (PN) from the third-person omniscient narrator –
here is used simply to create a sense of closeness in a relatively distanced form of
reporting. Both grammatically and semantically, there would serve just as well. The
second instance demonstrates the use of lexical and graphological features associated
with DT to provide ‘speech colouring’ inside a segment of indirect thought. The use of
here combined with the index of temporal-closeness now creates a vivid impression of
Briony’s direct perception, without sacrificing the diegetic distance from which the
narrator analyses her.
1.2 Perception and Reporting in Atonement: Focalisation

Atonement has an omniscient third-person narrator5 but is at many points narrated by
Briony Tallis, who oscillates between being focalised and focaliser. Free Indirect
Thought (FIT) is used to convey Briony’s attitudes. This is often incredibly subtle,
noticeable only in the selection of material and modality. That “there would be time
for only one day of rehearsal before [Briony’s] brother arrived” (3) is attributable to
Briony mainly though the evaluative adverb only, as it expresses her anxiety for the
play to be good, and the constraints that have been placed upon her by circumstance6.
FIT is indicated by frequent modal verbs “how could she refuse a cousin so far from
home whose family life was in ruins?” (175) and by sentence adverbials “Of course
she was taking the part of Arabella” (159). She is ‘focalised from inside’ (Toolan
2001, 61), the reader receives a penetrating portrait through presentation of her
thoughts. Sometimes, text orientation shifts to directly convey her perception:
“Briony heard at last the sound of wheels on the gravel below her bedroom
window, and snatched up her pages and ran down the stairs, across the hallway
and out into the blinding light of midday” (72).
The actual actions described here are probably PN (Briony would hardly have thought
“I am snatching up my pages, I am running down the stairs”), but the expressive
adjunct “at last” and the impression of “the blinding light of midday” are definitely
4
orientated from Briony, as she has been couped-up inside waiting for her cousins’ with
anticipation. This sentence marks a shift from the narrator’s summary, which has been
an external intradiegetic analepsis, to ideal natural chronology in a ‘narrative present’.
It sets up the first DS in the extract – Briony’s – and demonstrates her immersion in
her play and alienation from the outside world: “I’ve got your parts, all written out.
First performance tomorrow! Rehearsals start in five minutes!” (73-5). The first
descriptions of her cousins all relate to their suitability for various parts in the play, so
are clearly orientated from Briony’s point of view7. By shifting from the perspective
of a (seemingly) extradiegetic narrator to an intradiegetic focaliser, the reader is
brought closer to story events, to directly sympathise with Briony.
1.3 ‘Psychological’ Novels and the Predominance of Discourse over

Story
Both authors apply complex strategies for establishing point of view because this
establishes the narrator’s personality. The importance of these extracts is therefore
located on the level of discourse rather than story, and especially on the level of
Structure of Narrative Transmission (see Figs 3&4). Here a relatively basic Substance
of Content is transformed into a rich literary experience. This marks these extracts out
as what Todorov defines as ‘psychological’ novels (Chatman 1978, 113). They are
primarily character-based, so the most important actions are not ‘physical’ ones but
expressions of personality. Number9Dream presents kernels that are ‘false’ in terms of
character action (Eiji doesn’t really storm the PanOpticon), but not in terms of
psychological development. Everything in both extracts, though it may not always
serve a direct story function, always serves a teleological one in terms of character
development. Plot is a function of character, since ‘character’ is a structural composite
of various narratives in the first place. As Henry James said “Character . . . is action,
and action is plot” (see Liddel 1947, 72). The narrator does not so much relate plot, as
plot ‘narrates’ the narrator’s character. That is, it presents an illustration of the
narrator’s character type8.
2 Interpretation Against the Narrator/Focalised

2.1 Atonement’s ‘Ironising’ Third Person Narrator
Briony perceives events, but the dominant reporter of these events is the omniscient
third-person narrator9. S/he is not constrained by Briony’s “limited” view, and
provides a holistic view of the Tallis household. The narrator is able to ‘read against’
5
Briony’s perceptions and demonstrate what she is ‘really’ like. In sentences 17-20
action is abandoned entirely and pace freezes to ‘descriptive pause’ in order to
describe Briony’s room. Such setting-description is, for Rimmon-Kennan, the
strongest marker of narratorial presence (see Toolan 2001, 69) and this is indeed
where the narrator becomes most fully realised as an independent voice, describing
elements of Briony’s personality that she would not be able to identify herself.
Briony’s room is described using particularly mediated stasis statements, where
identificatory information such as the positioning of Briony’s toys are described as
being directly attributive of various personality traits. Her room is therefore not “tidy”
but “a shrine to her controlling demon” (18).10 This narrator purports to have absolute,
objective authority in describing Briony. When describing personality traits it
demonstrates the status to make foundational orientations using unmodalised
relational processes, many of which are identificatory:
sentence identifier rel. pro. identified identifier

19 Briony's was the only tidy upstairs Briony's [room]
[room] room in the house (19)
21 A taste for was one aspect of an orderly A taste for the

the spirit (21) miniature
miniature
22 Another was a passion for secrets Another [aspect of her

[aspect of (22) orderly spirit]
her
orderly
spirit]
The narrator also gives Briony’s play a ‘definitive’ interpretation. In announcing that
“the piece was intended to inspire not laughter, but terror, relief and instruction, in that
order” s/he implies that it is likely to make an adult audience laugh (59). This
sentence is prefaced by a sentence that uses may have been idiomatically to mean
was: “The Trials of Arabella may have been a melodrama”. It then makes a statement
that is vital in the construction of an implied reader: “its author had yet to hear the
term” (58). This implies a reader who has a more advanced grasp of narrative
conventions than Briony, who would find the heightened emotions of her melodrama
distasteful and who is complicit with the third person narrator in this view. This is not
to say that we feel any less sympathy towards Briony, especially as the narrator builds
on our new orientation looking at Briony rather than with her to create suspense.
6
The declaration that “the innocent intensity with which Briony set about the
project - the posters, tickets, sales booth - made her particularly vulnerable to failure”
(59) is stylistically similar to a Labovian evaluation, explaining the relevance of all
this reporting about Briony’s writing. It implies a tragic hypothetical outcome in
which “vulnerable” Briony is hurt by the reception of her play. A Barthesian narrative
‘fork’ is thus created to which the text is heading, in which Briony either will be hurt
or avoid being hurt. Briony cannot conceive this, thus making her behaviour more
poigniant whenever she becomes focaliser. There is in fact no resolution to these
conditions, as the events of the following evening mean that the play is not performed
for another sixty years, when Briony is much changed. The purpose of this potential
kernel, therefore, is as a plot action that contributes to characterisation. The
combination of our focalised closeness to Briony and our narrator-orientated
impression of her vulnerability create a particularly vivid impression of character.
The dual perspective of Briony’s FIT is ‘ironising’ in precisely the form
identified by Leech and Short, as it creates a “contrast in values associated with two
different points of view” (1981, 278). The information that the busy composition of
the play caused Briony to ‘miss a breakfast and a lunch’ (2) could be oriented from
her perspective or even that of her mother or sister. The implication is that this is an
exceptional event that illustrates the magnitude of Briony’s fervour. In the context of
the entire third-person opening sentence, however, it serves more as a form of
affectionate (for it is surely intended humorously) bathos. The play initially appears to
be a large-scale undertaking with posters, programmes and tickets, but the missing of
two meals as a consequence readjusts the scale to instead emphasise the relative
triviality of young Briony’s existence. Similarly, when we enter Briony’s FIT, with the
hint that she has been left to “contemplate her finished draft” (2), we regard the
statement that the play is “at some moments chilling, at others desperately sad” (4) as
Briony’s intention rather than the actual effect of the as yet unperformed artifice. 11
However the narrator’s authority shifts outside the extract, in Atonement’s
Epilogue, when it transpires to be intra- rather than extradiegetic. The narrator is
revealed to have actually been an elderly Briony, recounting her life. Like
Number9Dream’s imagined adventure story, then, the primary narration is a conceit.
David Lodge regards McEwan’s technique here as being particularly emblematic of
“an increasing reluctance among literary novelists to assume the narrative stance of
godlike omniscience that is implied by any third person representation of
7
consciousness, however covert and impersonal” (2002, 86). This technique certainly
raises Atonement above the criticisms levelled at many Nineteenth Century novels
written in the third person. This seemly ‘aloof’ external narrator actually transpires to
be an internal one after all, so its internal focalisation of Briony’s thoughts becomes
more plausible since her reporting is an older version of that same consciousness.
However, we should note the importance of retroversion here, as the revelation only
occurs in the final chapter. Though this changes the entire tone of the text, it does so
retroactively – reading the text for the first time the narrator is interpreted as an
external third-person figure, so this interpretation dominates.
2.2 Reading Against Eiji Miyake’s Discourse

Though Eiji is the sole narrator of Number9Dream, it is still possible to ‘read against’
his discourse. As with Briony, other characters’ present a different portrait. Akiko
Kato deflates Eiji’s grandiose actions with her imagined prolepsis of his future: “Such
a nice life you could have had, picking oranges on Yakushima with your uncles and
grandmother.” (312) The twist here is that Kato is in his mind so must be reflecting
Eiji’s own insecurities. Perspective and voice demonstrate that both extracts are about
about self-aggrandisement on the part of the focalised, but also that the motivation for
this self-aggrandisement is that ‘in reality’ the focalised is fairly powerless.
This can be demonstrated by analysis of transitivity functions12. On the level
of the superordinate story, transitivity processes in which Eiji is the ‘doer’ relate only
to thought or minor actions performed on coffee and cigarettes, watching, entombing
his cigarette, calculating, sipping coffee, constructing a legal case in his head,
supping the dregs of his coffee (twice), breaking into a ¥1000 note and ordering
coffee. He only performs two agentive actions, the first of which is related to
cognition rather than action: “[I] settle on the waitress of the living, wise, moonlit
viola neck [as a potential kissee]”. Transitive material processes are far more frequent
on the imagined narrative layer where Eiji has far more power. He is dominant in 62
of the extract’s 82 transitivity functions. In 52 he is the medium-initiator, operating
tools and guns and obtaining the file which identifies his father. The thirteen processes
in which Eiji plays an agentive role mark particular power over other human beings or
‘humanized’ (120) machines:
8
sentence agen mat.pro medium-t circ.

t
40 I storm your fortress [will have to]
81 I stalk [the waitresses] home [am a psycho

waiting to]
153 I paid the finest freelance [in Tokyo a

master hacker fortune for those
nine numbers]
237 I pepper her neck with enough

instant-action
tranquillizer
micro-pellets to
knock out the
entire Chinese
Army.
(5 & 268) I find my father [am in Tokyo to]
279 you reduce me [Akiko Kato] [to me to a state of

awed obedience]
*hypothetical*
284 you intimidate me [Akiko Kato] [expect to]

*hypothetical*
292 you [are] threatening me [Akiko Kato]
336 I wheel her body [Akiko Kato] into the corner
374 I kick her head [Akiko Kato]
374 I uppercut her [Akiko Kato] over the half-

moon sofa
385 I summon the elevator
412 I beam at Ice Maiden [could be

interpreted as an
intransitive clause,
with ‘at Ice
Maiden’ as a circ.]
429 ‘you are trying to me [Ice Maiden]

disgust
9
This pattern is repeated in Atonement, where Briony is only the ‘doer’ in processes
that refer to her writing: designed, constructed, written, studied, collecting, browsing.
Prior to the conceit, Eiji hints at his inclination to daydreaming: “How do
daydreams translate into reality?” Not very well, not very often” (37-39). This is very
much the theme of the extract. The reader is therefore unsurprised that when the real
kernel of entering the PanOpticon13 occurs, it transpires to be a disappointment. Eiji is
simply turned away. The extract satirises the way in which teenage boys view their
lives as heavily functional narratives, such as sci-fi movies or video games, when
actually their narrative is heavily indicial, a psychological story or daydream.
3 Narrative Layers & Characterisation

The ‘deepest’ narrative layer in both texts is one constructed in the main protagonists’
imagination (Eiji’s adventure story and Briony’s play/imaginings) that serves purely
as characterisation, turning personality traits into discourse. They index character-
type.
3.1 Eiji’s Internal Narrative

Number9Dream has five narrative layers (see Fig 1). Layers 4a and 5 are disguised as
part of layer 3, the superordinate story. Leech and Short provide valuable insight into
the working of this conceit: “literary discourse can function simultaneously on many
levels, but unless there are signals to the contrary, the reader will assumer a merger of
the different levels ‘by default’” (1981, 262). As the shift into Eiji’s imagined
prolepsis is not reported (or, is reported subtly through the markers  and ) the
reader simply conflates this layer with the one above. The reader assumes that Eiji’s
narrative is part of the (increasingly melodramatic) superordinate story14 until they are
retrospectively informed otherwise. There are, however, hints within the adventure
story when the indeterminacy of indirect speech is utilised: “I make a witty pun in the
manner of James Bond for my own amusement” (239). This foregrounds the sense
that this story is being told rather than experienced. Eiji can’t actually think of this
pun, but knows the effect that he wants to achieve. It also serves as a generic marker
of the type of narrative he is attempting to construct.
Even outside the adventure story, Eiji appears to be constructing his own
reality15. Of the extract’s 16 characters, six are not named deictically but by Eiji (see
Fig 3). Foregrounding Barthes’ idea that character is constructed from a list of traits,
10
Eiji first notices something about a character’s personality, and then nominalises this
to subsequently name them:
Professional Position Character Trait Nominalisation

‘the boss’ waitress as brittle as an imperial Dowager (50, 53, 90, 510)
dowager who poisoned her
husband with misery (49)
Waitress one has a braying, donkey Donkey (50, 53, 90)

voice (49)
An old man (75) He is identical to Lao Tzu Lao Tzu (80, 86, 104, 492,
from my school textbook - 496)
bald, nutty, bearded (77)
[Security woman on An ice maiden appears on Ice Maiden (capitalised by

screen] the screen before me (115) 412 – has nominalised
metaphor) 151, 412
a security guard (391) He has the mass and Minotaur (395, 399, 407,
nostrils of a minotaur. 409)
(392)
This reification of character traits creates relatively ‘flat’ characters16, as it naturalises

the idea that there is nothing to them beyond the trait that Eiji has picked up17.
Noticeably the waitress “with most perfect neck in all creation” (49) does not receive
this ‘dehumanising’ activity. Her neck remains just a trait, one element of a potentially
rounded character because Eiji is obsessed with her18.
3.2 The Trials Of Arabella: Briony’s Internal Narratives

See Fig 2. Briony’s imagined narrative layer is not confused by the reader with reality,
as in Number9Dream, as it presents events that are spatio-temporally distant. More
importantly, Briony’s play (sentences 5-8) is presented as Free Indirect Writing. Play
events are reported from Briony’s perspective, with her modality colouring our
portrait of “a wicked count” and Arabella’s “wreckless passion” and “impetuous dash”.
Indirect reporting intentionally diminishes the importance of the play, using it to
narrativise Briony’s straightforward morality and melodramatic nature. When
Briony’s FIT dismisses her earliest writing as “imitative of half a dozen folk tales”
(33) the reader realises that this retrospective criticism of the generic nature of her
stories may one day come to be applied to The Trials of Arabella. It is certainly
11
applicable to her closing fantasy of self-annihilation, which is effectively an amalgam

of folktale archetypes – living as a feral enfants sauvage, the image of a dead girl
frozen under a tree, and most clichéd of all, the bearded woodsman, a figure who
belittles all of Briony’s attempts at sophistication, echoed as he is from Little Red
Riding Hood.
Briony’s imagined narrative layer extends beyond the play, to “the little
playlets in themselves” (14) of Leon’s reactions to the play, and her reaction to Lola
usurping her by taking the lead role. The ridiculousness of Briony’s proleptic death
(186) is stressed by the length of the sentence in which it is conveyed. The relentless
progress of new clauses constructing Briony’s plot demonstrates the rapidly escalating
anxiety of her thoughts, in which only the absolute superlative, her own annihilation,
will do. As with the reporting that Briony missed a lunch and a breakfast, an FIT
statement that not only follows Briony’s direct line of thought but also incorporates
the ironising tone of the third person narrator serves as bathos. Briony’s great drama
suffers a shift in pace as she stops to consider what she should be wearing when she is
found dead (indicated by one of the particularly strong sentence adverbials that mark
FIT, perhaps, in “perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with pink ribbon straps”, 186).
This closing sentence, as FIT, follows a realistic pattern in the ‘real time’ construction
of fantasies. While imagining, events are refined and reordered so as to come up with
the most satisfying fantasy possible. In Eiji’s adventure story one of the strongest
elements of the conceit (that it is imagined) is the absence of such revisions.
3.3 Genre Appropriation and Internalisation

These imagined narratives have been internalised from other narratives that the central
protagonists have experienced. Briony’s imaginings contains traces of Victorian
melodrama and fairytales. Eiji’s process of internalisation is even more pronounced. A
detail he picks up from Lao Tzu’s DS when he is playing a video game: “Blasted,
blasted blasted bioborgs. Every blasted time” (104-105) becomes a key plot twist in
his imagined narrative, when the first Akiko Kato he encounters turns out to be a
bioborg19. He also internalises the Recruitment Officer’s lecture and repeats a phrase
from his lecture verbatim “sharpen my senses” (64 & 65), as justification for having a
cigarette.
Akiko Kato mocks Eiji’s behaviour by referencing the narratives he is
attempting to emulate: “Not Luke Skywalker? 278.Not Zax Omega? . . . You never
12
watched Bladerunner?” (277, 355). She presents, in direct speech, a movie/airport-

novel blurb to emphasise the generic nature of Eiji’s quest, and the way in which it
will not translate into reality: “One island boy embarks on a perilous mission to
discover the father he has never met”. Do you know what happens to island boys once
they leave their fantasies?” (280-1). She recapitulates his storming in as an internal
homodiegetic analeptic trace, using repetitive frequency to demonstrate the
ridiculousness of his behaviour: “I would order some sandwiches, but you shot my
telephone” (328).
Conclusion
Detailed linguistic analysis proves my opening three assertions and overall point that
‘plot’ actions can serve a characterisation function. These two novels certainly
demonstrate a general shift towards the representation of thought as the primary mode
of novels over the last fifty years. My analysis does however demonstrate that this
type of systematic language analysis remains party to the same intuitive and
impressionistic trappings of conventional literary criticism that it was supposed to
eliminate. As Leech and Short note, ‘it is impossible to tell by the use of formal
linguistic criteria alone whether one is reading the thoughts of the character or the
views of the narrator/author’ (1981, 338). Unpacking the unconscious presuppositions
and cultural codes that establish character is a sure-fire way of falling victim to one’s
own cultural prejudices. My analysis applies a ‘top-down’ structure onto these
extracts and judges them on the terms of this external structure. The story/discourse
divide, upon which my first point relies is especially dangerous as there can be no
form without content and no content without form. Ultimately, however, this
systematic does provide valuable insights into point of view.
13
Fig 1: Diagram of Narrative Levels in Number9Dream
Addresser 1 Addressee 1
(David Mitchell) (Reader)
Conflated Layers
Message
(Novel)
(Implied Author) (Implied Reader)
Message
(Novel)
(Eiji Miyake) (Eiji Miyaje/Implied Reader)
Message
Conflated Layers
(superordinate story)
Addressers 4b Addressees 4b
Addresser 4a Addressee 4a
(Characters) (Characters)
(Eiji’s (Eiji Miyake)
imagination)
Message Message
(dialogue)
(adventure story)
Addresser 5 Addresser 5
(characters) (characters)
Message
(dialogue)
(Derived from the structure laid down in Chatman 1978, 26)
14
Fig 2: Diagram of Narrative Levels in Atonement
(Ian McEwan) (Reader)
Conflated Layers
Message
(Novel)
(Implied Author) (Implied Reader)
Message
(Novel)
(Third Person (Implied Reader)
Narrator - actually
elderly Briony)
Message
(superordinate story)
Addressee 4a Addressers 4a Addressees 4a

Addresser 4a
(Briony herself) (Characters) (Characters)
(Briony as focaliser)
Message Message
(superordinate story) (dialogue)
Addresser 5 Addressees 5
(Briony as focaliser) (Implied audience –
Miyake) Emilly Tallis, Leon )
Message
(The Trials of Arabella & Briony’s
other fantasies)
15
Events Actions & smoking
Happenings thinking
Psychological Novels of 2001 talking to Lao Tzu
running
Fig 3: Diagram of Narrative Elements In Number9Dream threatening
coercing
lying
Story shooting
(Content) obtaining the folder
Characters
Eiji Miyake / Ran So
Akiko Kato*
Eiji’s Father*
Clientele of the Jupite
‘The biker ahead of m
Passers by (28)
Existents Waitresses – Do
Do
The
Recruitment Officer
Narrative
Lao Tzu†
Text
Ice Maiden*†
(Number9
The Receptionist*
Dream)
Minotaur*†
Terrified public outsi
Anju*
Setting
Tokyo
Jupiter Café
Panopticon (* interio
Yakushima (Eiji’s ho
Story elements,
Eiji Miyake sits in the Jupiter
pre-processed
those around him and fanta
by author’s
future meeting with a lawye
cultural codes
able to identify his father.
Structure of
Narrative First person narration orie
Transmission view (allowing reading agai
to establish some character
begins with observations
situation – postmodern ur
interspersed with analeptic
traces. Then rapid a
sequence, which is (vit
afterwards as imagin
Discourse homodiegetic prolepsis. Va
(Expression) extract is of ‘scene’ dura
ideal natural chronology.
other characters allows
KEY reinterpret Eiji’s situation.
* Imagined by Eiji
† Named after character Manifestation TEXT, verbal. ‘A Novel

attributes by Eiji particular economic comm
various presupposed attribute
16
Events Actions & writing, contemp
Happenings encouraging, orga
divorcing, rehears
dripping, dressing
Fig 4: Diagram of Narrative Elements In Atonement impetuous dashing

country, contractin
healing, marrying,
Story
(Content)
Characters Briony Tallis
Her cousins –
Leon Tallis (Brion

Arabella*
‘Wicked Foreign C
Impoverished Doc
Existents Arabella’s Family
Emilly Tallis (Brio
Leon’s ‘careless su
Cecilia (Briony’s s
Narrative Hermione (Emily
Text Cecil (Hermione’s
(Atonement) Hardman’s son Da
Shakespeare*
A bearded woodsm
Setting Mrs Tallis’ bedro

garret’* (6), ‘som
hole’* (15), Cecil
Soul’s College Ox
the pool, the base
Story elements, Eleven-year old Briony Talli

pre-processed shows it to her impressed mo
by author’s cousins come to visit (becaus
cultural codes divorcing), they are reluctan
practising Briony’s play, sha
process
Structure of Omniscient third person n
Narrative Briony, but also allows nar
Transmission objective view of character
other characters. Extract b
Briony’s writing techniqu
reporting of her fiction itself
tracing the way in which he
When her cousins arrive, tex
convey Briony’s free indire
Discourse scene is mainly dialogue
(Expression) Briony’s perspective) b
protagonists, in the nurser
convey the importance of B
KEY that her visions will be dest
* Imagined by Briony to reality, pace slows into ‘st
Manifestation TEXT, verbal. ‘A Novel

particular economic comm
various presupposed attribute
17
18
Appendix I: Extracts from Number9Dream
1. 'It is a simple matter. 2. I know your name, nd
you knew mine, once upon a time: Eiji Miyake. 3.
Yes, that Eiji Miyake. 4. We are both busy
people, Ms Kato, so why not cut the small talk?
5. I am in Tokyo to find my father. 6. You know
his name and you know his address. 7. And you
are going to give me both. 8. Right now.' 9. Or
something like that. 10. A galaxy of cream
unribbons in my coffee cup, and the background
chatter pulls into focus. 11. My first morning in
Tokyo, and I am already getting ahead of myself.
12. The Jupiter cafe sloshes with lunch-hour
laughter, Friday plottings, clinking saucers. 13.
Drones bark into mobile phones. 14. She-drones
hitch up sagging voices to sound more feminine.
15. Coffee, seafood sandwiches, detergent,
steam. 15. I have an across-the-street view of
the PanOpticon's main entrance. 16. Quite a
sight, this zirconium gothic skyscraper. 17. Its
upper floors are hidden by clouds. 18. Under it's
tight-fitting lid, Tokyo steams -34C with 86%
humidity. 19. A big Panasonic display says so.
20. Tokyo is so close up you cannot always see
it. 21. No distances. 22. Everything is over your
head - dentists, kindergartens, dance studios.
23. Even the roads and walkways are up on
murky stilts. 24. Venice with the water drained
away. 25. Reflected airplanes climb over
mirrored buildings. 26. I always thought
Kagoshima was huge, but you could lose it down
a side alley in Shinjuku. 27. I light a cigarette -
Kool, the brand chosen by a biker ahead of me
in the queue - and watch the traffic and passers-
by on the intersection between Omekaido
Avenue and Kita Street. 28. Pin-striped drones, a
lip-pierced hairdresser, midday drunks, child-
laden housewives. 29.Not a single person is
standing still. 30. Rivers, snowstorms, traffic,
bytes, generations, a thousand faces per
minute. 31. Yakushima is a thousand minutes
per face. 32. All of these people with their boxes
of memories labelled 'Parents'. 33. Good shots,
bad shots, frightening figures, tender pictures,
fuzzy angles, scratched negatives - it doesn't
matter, they know who ushered them on to
Earth. 34. Akiko Kato, I am waiting. Jupiter Cafe
is the nearest lunch place to PanOpticon. 35. It
would be so much simpler if you would just drop
by here for a sandwich and a coffee. 36. I will
recognize you, introduce myself, and persuade
you that natural justice is on my side. 37. How
do daydreams translate into reality? 38. I sigh.
39. Not very well, not very often. 40. I will have
to storm your fortress in order to get what I
want. 41. Not good. 42. A building as huge as
the PanOpticon probably has other exits, and its
own restaurants. 43.You are probably an
empress by now with slaves to fetch your meals.

44.Who says you even eat lunch? 45.Maybe a
human heart for breakfast tides you, over until
suppertime. 46.I entomb my Kool in the remains
of its ancestors, and resolve to end my stake-out
when I finish this coffee. 47.I'm coming in to get
you, Akiko Kato. 48.Three waitresses staff Jupiter
Cafe. 49.One - the boss - is as brittle as an
imperial dowager who poisoned her husband
with misery, one has a braying, donkey voice,
and the third is turned away from me, but she
has the most perfect neck in all creation.
50.Dowager is telling Donkey about her
hairdresser's latest failed marriage. 51.'When
his wife fails to measure up to his fantasies, he
throws her overboard.' 52.The waitress with the
perfect neck is serving a life sentence at the
sink. 53.Are Dowager and Donkey cold-
shouldering her, or is she cold-shouldering
them? 54.Level by level, the PanOpticon
disappears the clouds are down to the
eighteenth floor. 55.The fog descends farther
when I look away. 56.I calculate the number of
days I have been alive on a paper serviette -
7,290, including four leap years. 57.The clock
says five to one, and the drones drain away
from Jupiter Cafe. 58.I guess they are afraid
they'll get restructured if one o'clock finds them
anywhere but their striplit cubicles. 59.My coffee
cup stands empty in a moat of slops. 60.Right.
When the hour hand touches one, I'm going into
the PanOpticon. 61.I admit I'm nervous.
62.Nervous is cool. 63.A recruitment officer for
the Self-Defence Forces came to my high school
last year, and said that no fighting unit wants
people who are immune to fear - soldiers.who
don't feel fear get their platoon killed in the first
five minutes on the battlefield. 64.A good soldier
controls and uses his fear to sharpen his senses.
65.One more coffee? 66.No. 67.One more Kool,
to sharpen my senses.
68.The clock touches half-past one - my
deadline died. 69.My ashtray is brimming over. I
shake my cigarette box - down to my last one.
70.The clouds are down to the PanOpticon's
ninth floor. 71.Akiko Kato gazes through her air-
conned office suite window into fog. 72.Can she
sense me, as I sense her? 73.Can she tell that
today is one of those life-changing days? 74.One
final, final, final cigarette: then my assault
begins before 'nervous' becomes 'spineless'.
75.An old man was in Jupiter Cafè when I
arrived. 76.He hasn't stopped playing his vidboy.
77.He is identical to Lao Tzu from my school
textbook - bald, nutty, bearded. 78.Other
customers arrive, order, drink and eat up, and
leave within minu.tes. 79.Decades' worth.
80.But Lao Tzu stays put. 81.The waitresses
must imagine my girlfriend has stood me up, or
20
else I am a psycho waiting to stalk them home.

82.A muzak version of 'Imagine' comes on and
John Lennon wakes up in his tomb, appalled.
83.It is vile beyond belief. 84.Even the traitors
who recorded this horror hated it. 85.Two
pregnant women enter and order iced lemon
teas. 86.Lao Tzu coughs a cough of no return,
and dabs phlegm off his vidboy screen with his
shirtsleeve. 87.I drag smoke down deep and
trickle it out through my nostrils. 88.What Tokyo
needs is a good flooding to clean it up.
89.Mandolineering gondoliers punting down
Ginza. 90.'Mind you,' continues Dowager to
Donkey, 'his wives are such grasping, mincing
little creatures, they deserve everything they
get. 91.When you marry be sure to select a
husband whose dreams are exactly the same
size as your own.' 92.I sip my coffee foam.
93.My mug rim has traces of lipstick. 94.I
construct a legal case to argue that sipping from
this part of the bowl constitutes a kiss with a
stranger. 95.That would increase my tally of
kissed girls to three, still less than the national
average. 96.I look around the Jupiter Cafe for a
potential kissee, and settle on the waitress of
the living, wise, moonlit viola neck. 97.A tendril
of hair has fallen loose, and brushes her nape.
98.It tickles. 99.I compare the fuchsia pink on
the mug with the pink of her lipstick.
100.Circumstantial evidence, at any distance.
101.Who knows how many times the cup has
been dishwashed, fusing the lipstick atoms with
the porcelain molecules? 102.And a
sophisticated Tokyoite like her has enough
admirers to fill a pocket computer. 103.Case
dismissed. 104.Lao Tzu growls at his vidboy.
'Blasted, blasted blasted bioborgs. 105.Every
blasted time.' 106.I sup my dregs and put on my
baseball cap. 107.Time to go and find my maker.
108.PanOticon's lobby - cavernous as the belly

of a stone whale - swallows me whole.
109.Arrows in the floorpads sense my feet, and
guide me to a vacant reception booth. 110.A
door hisses shut behind me, sealing
subterranean blackness. 111.A tracer light scans
me from head to foot, blipping over the barcode
on my ID Panel. 112.An amber spotlight comes
on, and my reflection stares back.113. I
certainly look the part. 114.Overalls, baseball
cap, toolbox and clipboard. 115.An ice maiden
appears on the screen before me. 116.She is
blemishlessly, symmetrically beautiful.
117.SECURITY glows on her lapel badge.
118.'State your name,' she intones, 'and
business.' 119.I wonder how human she is.
120.These are days when computers humanize
and humans computerize. 121. I play the
21
overawed yokel. 122.'Afternoon. 123.My name is

Ran Sogabe. 124.I'm a Goldfish Pal.'
125.She frowns. 126.Excellent. 127.She's only

human. 128.'Goldfish Pal?'
129.'Not seen our ad, ma'am?' 130.I sing a

jingle. 'We cater for our finny friends -'
131.Why are you requesting access to

PanOpticon?'
132.I act puzzled. 133.'I service Osugi and

Kosugi's aquarium, ma'am.'
134.'Osugi and Bosugi.'
135I check my clipboard. 136.'That's the

badger.'
137.'I'm scanning some curious objects in your

toolbox.'
138.'Newly imported from Germany, ma'am.

139.May I present the ionic flurocarb pellet
popper - doubtless you know how crucial pH
stability is for the optimum aquarium
environment? 140.We believe we are the first
aquaculturists in the country to utilize this little
wonder. 141.Perhaps I could offer a brief -'
142.'Place your right hand on the access

scanner, Mr Sogabe.'
143.'I hope this is going to tickle.'
144.'That is your left hand.'
145.'Beg pardon.'
146.A brief eternity elapses before a green

AUTHORIZED blinks. 147.'And your access
code?'
148.She is vigilant. 149.I scrunch my eyes.

150.'Let me see: 313 - 636 - 969.'
151.The eyes of the ice maiden flicker. 152.'Your

access code is valid.' 153.So it should be. I paid
the finest freelance master hacker in Tokyo a
fortune for those nine numbers. 154.'For the
month of July. 155.I must remind you we are
now in August.'
156.Cheapskate bum jet-trash hackers. 157.'Uh,

how peculiar.' 158.I scratch my crotch to buy
myself a moment. 159.'That was the access
code I was given by Ms' - a doleful glance at my
clipboard - 'Akiko Kato, associate lawyer at
Osugi and Kosugi.'
160.'Bosugi.'
22
161.'Whatever. 162.Oh well. 163.If my access

code isn't valid I can't very well enter, can I?
164.Pity. 165.When Ms Kato wants to know why
her priceless Okinawan silverspines died from
excrement poisoning, I can refer her to you.
166.What did you say your name was?'
167.Ice Maiden hardens. 168.Zealous ones are

bluff-susceptible.
169.'Return tomorrow after rechecking your

access codes.'
170.I huff and shake my head. 171.'Impossible!

172.Do you know how many fish I got on my
turf? 173.In the old days, we had a bit more give
and take, but since total quality management
got hold of us we operate within an hour-by-hour
timeframe. 174.One missed appointment, and
our finny friends are phosphate feed. 176.Even
while I stand here nitpicking with you, I got
ninety angel-fish at the Metropolitan City Office
in danger of asphyxiation. 177.No hard feelings,
ma'am, but I have to insist on your name for our
legal waiver form.' 178.I do my dramatic pen-
poise pause.
179.Ice Maiden flickers.
180.I relent. '181.Why not call Ms Kato's

secretary? 182.She'll confirm my appointment.'
183.'I already did.' 184.Now I'm worried. 185.If

my hacker got my alias wrong too, I am already
burger-meat. 186.'But your appointment
appears to be for tomorrow.'
187.'True. 188.Quite true. 189.My appointment

was for tomorrow. 190.But the Fish Ministry
issued an industry-wide warning last night.
191.An epidemic of silverspine, uh, ebola has
come in from a contaminated Taiwanese batch.
192.It travels down air conduits, lodges itself in
the gills, and . . . a disgusting sight to behold.
193.Fish literally swelling until their entrails pop
out. 194.The boffins are working on a cure, but
between you and me-'
195.Ice Maiden cracks. 196.'Anciliary

authorization is granted for two hours. 197.From
the reception booth proceed to the turbo
elevator. 198.Do not stray from the sensor floor
arrows, or you will trigger alarms and illegal
entry recriminations. 199.The elevator will
automatically proceed to Osugi and Bosugi on
level eighty-one.'
200.'Level eighty-one, Mr Sogabe,' announces

the elevator. 201.'I look forward to serving you
again.' 202.The doors open on to a virtual
rainforest of pot plants and ferns. 203.An aviary
23
of telephones trill. Behind an ebony desk, a

young woman removes her glasses and puts
down a spray-mister. 204.'Security said Mr
Sogabe was coming.'
205.'Let me guess! Kazuyo, Kazuyo, am I right?'
206.'Yes, but-'
207.'No wonder Ran calls you his PanOpticon

Angel!'
208.The receptionist isn't falling for it. 209.'Your

name is?'
210.'Ran's apprentice! Joji. 211.Don't tell me

he's never mentioned me! 212.I do Harajuku
normally, but I'm covering his Shinjuku clients
this month on account of his, uh, genital
malaria.'
213.Her face falls. 214.'I beg your pardon?'
215.'Ran never mentioned it? 216.Well, who can

blame him? 217.The boss thinks it's just a heavy
cold. 218. that's why Ran didn't actually cancel
his name from his clients' books ... All hush-
hush!' 219.I smile gingerly and look around for
video cameras. 220.None visible. 221.I kneel,
open my toolbox with the lid blocking her view,
and begin assembling my secret weapon.
222.'Had a hell of time getting in here, y'know.
223.Artificial intelligence! 224.Artificial stupidity.
225.Ms Kato's office is down this corridor, is it?'
226.'Yes, but, look, Mr Joii, I have to ask you for

a retinal scan.'
227.'Does it tickle?' 228.Finished. 229.I close the

toolbox and approach her desk with my hands
behind my back and a gormless grin.
230.'Where do I look?'
231.She turns a scanner towards me. 'Into this

eyepiece.'
232.'Kazuyo.' I check we are alone. 233.'Ran

told me, about, y'know - is it true?'
234.'Is what true?'
235.'Your eleventh toe?'
236.'My eleventh what?' 237.The moment she

looks at her feet I pepper her neck with enough
instant-action tranquillizer micro-pellets to
knock out the entire Chinese Army. 238.She
slumps on her blotter. 239.I make a witty pun in
the manner of James Bond for my own
amusement.
24
240.I knock three times. 241.'Goldfish Pal, Ms

Kato!'
242.A mysterious pause. 243.'Enter.'
244.I check that the corridor is empty of

witnesses, and slip in. 245.The actual lair of
Akiko Kato matches closely the version in my
imagination. 246.A chequered carpet. 247.A
curved window of troubled cloud. 248.A wall of
old-fashioned filing cabinets. 249.A wall of
paintings too tasteful to trap the eye.
250.Between two half-moon sofas sits a huge
spherical tank where a fleet of Okinawan
silverspines haunt a coral palace and a sunken
battleship. 251.Nine years have passed since I
last saw Akiko Kato, but she has not aged a
single day. 252.Her beauty is as cold and callous
as ever. 253.She glances up from behind her
desk. 254.'You are not the ordinary fish man.'
255.I lock the door. and drop the key in my

pocket with my gun.
256.She looks me up and down.
257.'I am no fish man at all.'
258.She puts down her pen. 259.'What the hell

do you-'
260.'It is a simple matter. 261.I know your

name, and you knew mine, once upon a time:
262.Eiji Miyake. 263.Yes, that Eiji Miyake.
264.True. 265.It has been many years. 266.Look.
267.We are both busy people, so why not cut
the small talk? 268.I am in Tokyo to find my
father. 269.You know his name and you know his
address. 270.And you are going to give me both.
271.Right now.'
272.Akiko Kato blinks, to verify the facts.

273.Then she laughs. 274.'Eiji Miyake?'
276.'I fail to see the funny side.'
277.'Not Luke Skywalker? 278.Not Zax Omega?

279.Do you seriously expect to reduce me to a
state of awed obedience by your pathetic spiel?
280."One island boy embarks on a perilous
mission to discover the father he has never
met." 281.Do you know what happens to island
boys once they leave their fantasies?' 282.She
shakes her head in mock pity. 283.'Even my
friends call me the most poisonous lawyer in
Tokyo. 284.And you burst in here, expecting to
intimidate me into passing on classified client
information? 285.Please!'
286.'Ms Kato. 287.I produce my Walther PK

7.65mm, spin it nattily and aim it at her.
25
288.'You have a file on my father in this room.

289.Give it to me. 290.Please.'
291.She fakes outrage. 292.'Are you threatening

me?'
293.I release the safety catch. 294.'I hope so.

295.Hands up where I can see them.'
296.'You got hold of the wrong script, child.'

297.She picks up her telephone, which explodes
in a plastic supernova. 298.The bullet pings off
the bulletproof glass and slashes into a picture
of lurid sunflowers. 299.Akiko Kato bulges her
eyes at the rip. 300.'You heathen! 301.You
damaged my Van Gogh! 302.You are going to
pay for that!'
303.'Which is more than you ever did. 304.The

file. 305.Now.'
306.Akiko Kato snarls. 307.'Security will be here

within thirty seconds.'
308.'I know the electronic blueprint of your

office. 309.Spyproofed and soundproofed.
310.No messages in, none out. 311.Stop
blustering and give me the file.'
312.'Such a nice life you could have had, picking

oranges on Yakushima with your uncles and
grandmother.'
313.'I don't want to ask you again.'
314.'If only matters were so simple. 315.But you

see, your father has too much to lose. 316.Were
news of his whored bastard offspring brat - you,
that is - to leak out, it would cause red faces in
high places. 317.This is why we have a modest
secrecy retainer arrangement.'
318.'So?'
319.'So, this is a cosy little boat you are

attempting to rock.'
320.'Ah. 321.I see. 322.If I meet my father you

won't be able to blackmail him.'
323."'Blackmail" is a litigable word for someone

still in search of the perfect acne lotion.
324.Being your father's lawyer calls for
discretion. 324.Ever heard of discretion? 325.It
sets decent citizens apart from criminals with
handguns.'
326.'I am not leaving this office without the file.'
327.'You have a long wait ahead. 328.I would

order some sandwiches, but you shot my
telephone.'
26
329.I don't have time for this. 330.'Okay, okay,

maybe we can discuss this in a more adult way.'
331.I lower my gun, and Akiko Kato allows
herself a pert smile of victory. 332.The
tranquillizers embed themselves in her neck.
333.She slumps back on to her chair, as
unconscious as the deep blue sea.
334.Speed is everything. 335.I peel the Akiko

Kato fingerpads over the Ran Sogabe ones, and
access her computer. 336.I wheel her body into
the corner. 337.Not nice - I keep thinking she's
going to come back to life. 338.The deeper
computer files are passworded, but I can
override the locks on the filing cabinets. 339.MI
for MIYAKE. 340.My name appears on the menu.
341.Double-click. 342.EIJI. 343.Double-click.
344.I hear a promising mechanical clunk, and a
drawer telescopes open halfway down the wall.
345.I leaf through the slim metal carrier cases.
346.MIYAKE - EIJI - PATERNITY. 347.The case
shines gold.
348.'Drop it.'
349.Akiko Kato closes the door with her ankle,

and levels a Zuvre Lone Eagle .440 at the spot
between my eyebrows. 350.Dumbly, I look at
the Akiko Kato still slumped in her chair. 351.The
doorway Kato laughs, a grin twisted and broad.
352.Emeralds and rubies are set in her teeth.
353.'A bioborg, dummy! 354.A replicant!
355.You never watched Bladerunner? 356.We
saw you coming! 357.Our spy picked you up in
Jupiter Cafè - the old man you bought cigarettes
for? 358.His vidboy is an eye-cam linked to
PanOpticon central computer. 359.Now kneel
down - slowly - and slide your gun across the
floor. 360.Slowly. 361.Don't make me nervous.
362.A Zuvre at this range will scramble your
face so badly your own mother wouldn't
recognize you. 363.But then, that never was her
strong point, was it?'
364.I ignore the taunt. 365.'Unwise to approach

an intruder without back-up.'
366.'Your father's file is a highly sensitive issue.'
367.'So your bioborg was telling the truth.

368.You want to keep the hush money my father
pays you all for yourself.'
369.'Your main concern should not be practical

ethics, but to dissuade me from omeletteing
you.' 370.Keeping her eyes trained on me, she
bends over to retrieve my Walther. 371.I aim the
carrier case at her face and open the
switchclips. 372.The lid-mounted incandescent
booby trap explodes in her eyes. 373.She
27
screams, I roll-dive, her Zuvre fires, glass cracks,

374.I leap through the air, kick her head, wrench
the pistol from her grip - it fires again - spin her
around and uppercut her over the half-moon
sofa. 375.Silverspines gush and thrash on the
carpet. 376.The real Akiko Kato lies motionless.
377.I stuff the sealed folder on my father down
my overalls, load up my toolbox and exit. 378.I
close the door quietly over the slow stain
already gathering on the corridor carpet. 379.I
stroll down to the elevator, casually whistling
'Imagine'. 380.That was the easy part. 381.Now
I have to get out of PanOpticon alive.
382.Drones fuss around the receptionist still

slumped in her rainforest. 383.Weird. 384.I leave
a trail of unconscious women wherever I go.
385.I summon the elevator, and show
appropriate concern. 386.'Sick building
syndrome, my uncle calls it. 387.Fish are
affected in the same way, believe it or not.'
388.The elevator arrives and an old nurse
barges out, tossing onlookers aside. 389.I step
in and press the close button to whisk me away
before anyone else can enter.
390.'Not so fast!' 391.A polished boot wedges

itself between the closing doors, and a security
guard muscles them apart. 392.He has the mass
and nostrils of a minotaur. 393.'Ground Zero,
son.'
394.I press the button and we begin our

descent.
395.'So,' says Minotaur. 396.'You an industrial

spy, or what?'
397.Blood and adrenalin swish through my body

in strange ways.
398.'Huh?'
399.Minotaur keeps a straight face. 400.'You're

trying to make a quick getaway, right?
401.That's why you nearly closed me in the
elevator doors up there.'
402.Oh. 403.A joke. 404.'Yep.' 405.I rap my

toolbox. 406..'Full of goldfish espionage data.'
407.Minotaur snorts a laugh.
408.The elevator slows and the doors open.

409.'After you,' I say, even though Minotaur
shows no signs of letting me go first. 410.He
disappears through a side door. 411.Floorpad
arrows return me to a security booth. 412.I
beam at Ice Maiden. 413.'I get to have you on
the way in and on the way out? 414.This is the
hand of destiny.'
28
415.Her eyes dart over a scanner. 416.'Standard

procedure.'
417.'Oh.'
418.'You have discharged your duties?'
419.'Fully, thank you. 420.You know, ma'am, we

at Goldfish Pal are proud to say that we have
never lost a fish due to negligence in eighteen
years of business. 421.We give each a post-
mortem, to establish cause of death. 422.Old
age, every time. 423.Or client-sourced alcohol
poisoning, during the end-of-year party season.
if you are free I could tell you more about it over
dinner.'
425.Ice Maiden glaciates me. 426.'We have

nothing whatsoever in common.'
427.'We're both carbon-based. 428.You can't

take that for granted these days.'
429.'If you are trying to disgust me out of asking

why you have a Zuvre .440 in your toolbox, I
must tell you that your efforts are wasted.'
430.I am a professional. 431.Fear must wait.

432.How, how, could I have been so stupid?
433.'That is absolutely impossible.'
444.'The gun is registered under Akiko Kato's

name.'
445.'Oooh!' I chuckle, open the box and take out

the gun. 446.'Do you mean this?'
447.'I do mean that.'
448.'This?'
449.'That.'
450.'This is, uh, for-'
451.'Yes?' 455.Ice Maiden reaches for an alarm.
456.' - this!' 457.The glass flowers with the first

shot - alarms scream - the glass mazes with the
second shot - I hear gas hiss - the glass cracks
with the third shot, and I throw my body through
the window - shouting and running - I land
tumbling over the floor of the lobby, flashing
with arrows. 458.Men and women crouch,
terrified. 459.Everywhere is noise and
jaggedness. 460.Down an access corridor
guards' boots pound this way. 461.I engage the
double safety catch, switch the Zuvre to
continuous plasma fire, toss it into the path of
the guards, and dive for the entrance. 462.Three
seconds to overload doesn't give me enough
time, and the explosion lifts me off my feet,
29
slams me into the revolving door, and literally

spins me down the steps outside. 463.A gun
that can blow up its user - no wonder Zuvres
were withdrawn from production nine weeks
after their launch. 464.Behind me all is chaos,
smoke and sprinklers. 465.Around me is
consternation, traffic collisions, and what I need
most - frightened crowds. '466.A madman!' I
rave. 467.'Madman on the loose! 468.Grenades!
469.He's got grenades! 470.Call the cops!
471.We need helicopters! 472.Helicopters
everywhere! 473..More helicopters!' 474.I
hobble away into the nearest department store.
475.I take my father's file from my new

briefcase, still in its plastic seal, and mentally
record the moment for posterity. 476.August
24th, twenty-five minutes past two, in the back
of a bioborg taxi, rounding the west side of
Yoyogi Park, under a sky as stained as a
bachelor's underfuton, less than twenty-four
hours after arriving in Tokyo, I discover my
father's true identity. 477.Not bad going. 478.I
straighten my tie. 479.I imagine Anju swinging
her legs on the seat beside me. 480.'See?' 481.I
tell her, tapping the file. 482.'Here he is. 483.His
name, his face, his house, who he is, what he is.
I did it. 484.For both of us.' 485.The taxi swerves
to one side as an ambulance blue-shifts towards
us. 486.I slit open the seal with my thumbnail,
and extract the card file. 487.EIJI MIYAKE. 488.
IDENTITY OF FATHER. 489.I take a deep breath,
and far things feel near.
490.Page one.
491.The air-reactive ink is already melting into

white.

492.Lao Tzu growls at his vidboy. 493.'Blasted
bioborgs. 494.Every blasted time.'
495.I sup my dregs, put on my baseball cap, and

mentally limber up.
496.'Say, Captain,' Lao Tzu croaks, 'you wouldn't

have a spare ciggie there, by any chance?'
497.I show him the empty carton of Mild Seven.

498.He gives me a doleful look. 499.I need some
more anyway. 500.I have a stressful meeting
ahead. 501.'Is there a machine in here?'
502.'Over there' - he nods - 'in all those plants.

503.I smoke CarIton.'
504.I have to break open yet another one-

thousand-yen note. 505.Money evaporates in
Tokyo. 506.I may as well order another coffee to
30
build up my adrenalin before facing the real

Akiko Kato. 507.In lieu of a fantasy Walther PK. I
deploy my telepathy - 'Waitress! 508.You with
the most perfect neck in all creation! 509.Stop
unloading the glasswasher, come to the counter
and serve me!' 510.My telepathy fails me today.
511.I get Dowager instead.
Appendix II: Extract from Atonement

1.The play - for which Briony had designed the
posters, programmes and tickets, constructed
the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on
its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe
paper - was written by her in a two-day tempest
of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast
and a lunch.
2. When the preparations were complete, she
had nothing to do but contemplate her finished
draft and wait for the appearance of her cousins
from the distant north. 3. There would be time
for only one day of rehearsal before her brother
arrived. 4. At some moments chilling, at others
desperately sad, the play told a tale of the heart
whose message, conveyed in a rhyming
prologue, was that love which did not build a
foundation on good sense was doomed. 5. The
reckless passion of the heroine, Arabella, for a
wicked foreign count is punished by ill fortune
when she contracts cholera during an impetuous
dash towards a seaside town with her intended.
6. Deserted by him and nearly everybody else,
bed-bound in a garret, she discovers in herself a
sense of humour. 7. Fortune presents her a
second chance in the form of an impoverished
doctor - in fact, a prince in disguise who has
elected to work among the needy. 8. Healed by
him, Arabella chooses judiciously this time, and
is rewarded by reconciliation with her family and
a wedding with the medical prince on 'a windy
sunlit day in spring'.
9. Mrs Tallis read the seven pages of The Trials

of Arabella in her bedroom, at her dressing
table. 10. With the author's arm around her
shoulder the whole while. Briony studied her
mother's face for every trace of shifting
emotion, and Emily Tallis obliged with looks of
alarm, snickers of glee and, at the end, grateful
smiles and wise, affirming nods. 11. She took
her daughter in her arms, onto her lap - ah, that
hot smooth little body she remembered from its
infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite
yet - and said that the play was 'stupendous',
and agreed instantly, murmuring into the tight
whorl of the girl's ear, that this word could be
quoted on the poster which was to be on an
easel in the entrance hall by the ticket booth.
31
12. Briony was hardly to know it then, but this

was the project's highest point of fulfilment. 13.
Nothing came near it for satisfaction, all else
was dreams and frustration. 14. There were
moments in the summer dusk after her light was
out, burrowing in the delicious gloom of her
canopy bed, when she made her heart thud with
luminous, yearning fantasies, little playlets in
themselves, every one of which featured Leon.
In one, his big, good-natured face buckled in
grief as Arabella sank in loneliness and despair.
15. In another, there he was, cocktail in hand at
some fashionable city watering hole, overheard
boasting to a group of friends: Yes, my younger
sister, Briony Tallis the writer, you must surely
have heard of her. In a third, he punched the air
in exultation as the final curtain fell, although
there was no curtain, there was no possibility of
a curtain. 16. Her play was not for her cousins, it
was for her brother, to celebrate his return,
provoke his admiration and guide him away
from his carless succession of girlfriends,
towards the right form of wife, the one who
would persuade him to return to the
countryside, the one who would sweetly request
Briony's services as a bridesmaid.
17. She was one of those children possessed by

a desire to have the world just so. 18. Whereas
her big sister's room was a stew of unclosed
books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed,
unemptied ashtrays, Briony's was a shrine to
her controlling demon: the model farm spread
across a deep window ledge consisted of the
usual animals, but all facing one way - towards
their owner - as if about to break into song, and
even the farmyard hens were neatly corralled.
19. In fact, Briony's was the only tidy upstairs
room in the house. 20. Her straight-backed dolls
in their many-roomed mansion appeared to be
under strict instructions not to touch the walls;
the various thumb-sized figures to be found
standing about her dressing table - cowboys,
deep-sea divers, humanoid mice - suggested by
their even ranks and spacing a citizen's army
awaiting orders.
21. A taste for the miniature was one aspect of

an orderly spirit. 22. Another was a passion for
secrets: in a prized varnished 23. cabinet, a
secret drawer was opened by pushing against
the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and
here she kept a diary locked by a clasp, and a
notebook written in a code of her own invention.
24. In a toy safe opened by six secret numbers
she stored letters and postcards. 25. An old tin
petty cash box was hidden under a removable
floorboard beneath her bed. 26. In the box were
treasures that dated back four years, to her
ninth birthday when she began collecting: a
32
mutant double acorn, fool's gold, a rain-making

spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel's skull as
light as a leaf.
27. But hidden drawers, lockable diaries and

cryptographic systems could not conceal from
Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. 28.
Her wish for a harmonious, organised world
denied her the reckless possibilities of
wrongdoing. 29. Mayhem and destruction were
too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have
it in her to be cruel. 30. Her effective status as
an only child, as well as the relative isolation of
the Tallis house, kept her, at least during the
long summer holidays, from girlish intrigues
with friends. 31. Nothing in her life was
sufficiently interesting or shameful to merit
hiding; no one knew about the squirrel's skull
beneath her bed, but no one wanted to know.
32. None of this was particularly an affliction; or
rather, it appeared so only in retrospect, once a
solution had been found.
33. At the age of eleven she wrote her first story

- a foolish affair, imitative of half a dozen folk
tales and lacking, she realised later, that vital
knowingness about the ways of the world which
compels a reader's respect. 34. But this first
clumsy attempt showed her that the
imagination itself was a source of secrets: once
she had begun a story, no one could be told. 35.
Pretending in words was too tentative, too
vulnerable, too embarrassing to let anyone
know. 36. Even writing out the she saids, the
and thens, made her wince, and she felt foolish,
appearing to know about the emotions of an
imaginary being. 37. Self-exposure was
inevitable the moment she described a
character's weakness; the reader was bound to
speculate that she was describing herself. 38.
What other authority could she have? 39. Only
when a story was finished, all fates resolved and
the whole matter sealed off at both ends so it
resembled, at least in this one respect, every
other finished story in the world, could she feel
immune, and ready to punch holes in the
margins, bind the chapters with pieces of string,
paint or draw the cover, and take the finished
work to show to her mother, or her father, when
he was home.
40. Her efforts received encouragement. 41. In

fact, they were welcomed as the Tallises began
to understand that the baby of the family
possessed a strange mind and a facility with
words. 42. The long afternoons she spent
browsing through dictionary and thesaurus
made for constructions that were inept, but
hauntingly so: the coins a villain concealed in
his pocket were 'esoteric.', a hoodlum caught
33
stealing a car wept in 'shameless auto-

exculpation.', the heroine on her thoroughbred
stallion made a 'cursory' journey through the
night, the king's furrowed brow was the
'hieroglyph' of his displeasure. 43. Briony was
encouraged to read her stories aloud in the
library and it surprised her parents and older
sister to hear their quiet girl perform so boldly,
making big gestures with her free arm, arching
her eyebrows as she did the voices, and looking
up from the page for seconds at a time as she
read in order to gaze into one face after the
other, unapologetically demanding her family's
total attention as she cast her narrative spell.
44. Even without their attention and praise and

obvious pleasure, Briony could not have been
held back from her writing. 45. In any case, she
was discovering, as had many writers before
her, that not all recognition is helpful. 46.
Cecilia's enthusiasm, for example, seemed a
little overstated, tainted with condescension
perhaps, and intrusive too; her big sister wanted
each bound story catalogued and placed on the
library shelves, between Rabindranath Tagore
and Quintus Tertullian. 47. If this was supposed
to be a joke, Briony ignored it. 48. She was on
course now, and had found satisfaction on other
levels; writing stories not only involved secrecy,
it also gave her all the pleasures of
miniaturisation. 49. A world could be made in
five pages, and one that was more pleasing than
a model farm. 50. The childhood of a spoiled
prince could be framed within half a page, a
moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one
rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling love
could be achieved in a single word - a glance.
51. The pages of a recently finished story
seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life
they contained. 52. Her passion for tidiness was
also satisfied, for an unruly world could be made
just so. 53. A crisis in a heroine's life could be
made to coincide with hailstones, gales and
thunder, whereas nuptials were generally
blessed with good light and soft breezes. 54. A
love of order also shaped the principles of
justice, with death and marriage the main
engines of house keeping, the former being set
aside exclusively for the morally dubious, the
latter a reward withheld until the final page.
55. The play she had written for Leon's

homecoming was her first excursion into drama,
and she had found the transition quite
effortless. 56. It was relief not to be writing out
the she saids, or describing the weather or the
onset of spring or her heroine's face - beauty,
she had discovered occupied a narrow band.
Ugliness, on the other hand, had infinite
variation. 57. A universe reduced to what was
34
said in it was tidiness indeed, almost to the

point of nullity, and to compensate, every
utterance was delivered at the extremity of
some feeling or other, in the service of which
the exclamation mark was indispensable. 58.
The Trials of Arabella may have been a
melodrama, but its author had yet to hear the
term. 59. The piece was intended to inspire not
laughter, but terror, relief and instruction, in that
order, and the innocent intensity with which
Briony set about the project - the posters,
tickets, sales booth - made her particularly
vulnerable to failure. 60. She could easily have
welcomed Leon with another of her stories, but
it was the news that her cousins from the north
were coming to stay that had prompted this leap
into a new form.
61. That Lola, who was fifteen, and the nine-

year-old twins, Jackson and Pierrot, were
refugees from a bitter domestic civil war should
have mattered more to Briony. 62. She had
heard her mother criticise the impulsive
behaviour of her younger sister Hermione, and
lament the situation of the three children, and
denounce her meek, evasive brother-in-law Cecil
who had fled to the safety of All Souls College,
Oxford. Briony had heard her mother and sister
analyse the latest twists and outrages, charges
and counter charges, and she knew her cousins'
visit was an open-ended one, and might even
extend into term time. 63. She had heard it said
that the house could easily absorb three
children, and that the Quinceys could stay as
long as they liked, provided the parents, if they
ever visited simultaneously, kept their quarrels
away from the Tallis household. 64. Two rooms
near Briony's had been dusted down, new
curtains had been hung and furniture carried in
from other rooms. 65. Normally, she would have
been involved in these preparations, but they
happened to coincide with her two-day writing
bout and the beginnings of the front-of-house
construction. 66. She vaguely knew that divorce
was an affliction, but she did not regard it as a
proper subject, and gave it no thought. 67. It
was.a mundane unravelling that could not be
reversed, and therefore offered no opportunities
to the storyteller: it belonged in the realm of
disorder. Marriage was the thing, or rather, a
wedding was, with its formal neatness of virtue
rewarded, the thrill of its pageantry and
banqueting, and dizzy promise of lifelong union.
68. A good wedding was an unacknowledged
representation of the as yet unthinkable - sexual
bliss. 69. In the aisles of country churches and
grand city cathedrals, witnessed by a whole
society of approving family and friends, her
heroines and heroes, reached their innocent
climaxes and needed to go no further.
35
70. If divorce had presented itself as the

dastardly antithesis of all this, it could easily
have been cast onto the other pan of the scales,
along with betrayal, illness, thieving, assault and
mendacity. 71. Instead it showed an
unglamorous face of dull complexity and
incessant wrangling. 72. Like re-armament and
the Abyssinia Question and gardening, it was
simply not a subject, and when, after a long
Saturday morning wait, Briony heard at last the
sound of wheels on the gravel below her
bedroom window, and snatched up her pages
and ran down the stairs, across the hallway and
out into the blinding light of midday, it was not
insensitivity so much as a highly focused artistic
ambition that caused her to shout to the dazed
young visitors huddled together by the trap with
their luggage, 'I've got your parts, all written
out. 73. First performance tomorrow! 74.
Rehearsals start in five minutes!'
75. Immediately, her mother and sister were

there to interpose a blander timetable. 76. The
visitors - all three were ginger-haired and
freckled - were shown their rooms, their cases
were carried up by Hardman's son Danny, there
was cordial in the kitchen, a tour of the house, a
swim in the pool and lunch in the south garden,
under the shade of the vines. 77. All the while,
Emily and Cecilia Tallis maintained a patter that
surely robbed the guests of the ease it was
supposed to confer. 78. Briony knew that if she
had travelled two hundred miles to a strange
house, bright questions and jokey asides, and
being told in a hundred different ways that she
was free to choose, would have oppressed her.
79. It was not generally realised that what
children mostly wanted was to be left alone. 80.
However, the Quinceys worked hard at
pretending to be amused or liberated, and this
boded well for The Trials of Arabella: this trio
clearly had the knack of being what they were
not, even though they barely resembled the
characters they were to play. 81. Before lunch
Briony slipped away to the empty rehearsal
room - the nursery - and walked up and down on
the painted floorboards, considering her casting
options.
82. On the face of it, Arabella, whose hair was

as dark as Briony's, was unlikely to be
descended from freckled parents, or elope with
a foreign freckled count, rent a garret room from
a freckled innkeeper, lose her heart to a freckled
prince and be married by a freckled vicar before
a freckled congregation. 83. But all this was to
be so. 84. Her cousins' colouring was too vivid -
virtually fluorescent! - to be concealed. 85. The
best that could be said was that Arabella's lack
of freckles was the sign - the hieroglyph, Briony
36
might have written - of her distinction. 86. Her

purity of spirit would never be in doubt, though
she moved through a blemished world. 87.
There was a further problem with the twins, who
could not be told apart by a stranger. 88. Was it
right that the wicked count should so completely
resemble the handsome prince, or that both
should resemble Arabella's father and the vicar?
89. What if Lola were cast as the prince? 90.
Jackson and Pierrot seemed typical eager little
boys who would probably do as they were told.
91. But would their sister play a man? 92. She
had green eyes and sharp bones in her face,
and hollow cheeks, and there was something
brittle in her reticence that suggested strong will
and a temper easily lost. 93. Merely floating the
possibility of the role to Lola might provoke a
crisis, and could Briony really hold hands with
her before the altar, while Jackson intoned from
the Book of Common Prayer?
94. It was not until five o'clock that afternoon

that she was able to assemble her cast in the
nursery. 95. She had arranged three stools in a
row, while she herself jammed her rump into an
ancient baby's high-chair - a bohemian touch
that gave her a tennis umpire's advantage of
height. 96. The twins had come with reluctance
from the pool where they had been for three
hours without a break. 97. They were barefoot
and wore singlets over trunks that dripped onto
the floorboards. 98. Water also ran down their
necks from their matted hair and both boys
were shivering and jiggled their knees to keep
warm. 99. The long immersion had puckered
and bleached their skin, so that in the relatively
low light of the nursery their freckles appeared
black. 100. Their sister, who sat between them,
with left leg balanced on right knee, was, by
contrast, perfectly composed, having liberally
applied perfume and changed into a green
gingham frock to offset her colouring. 101. Her
sandals revealed an ankle bracelet and toenails
painted vermilion. 102. The sight of these nails
gave Briony a constricting sensation around her
sternum, and she knew at once that she could
not ask Lola to play the prince.
103. Everyone was settled and the playwright

was about to begin her little speech
summarising the plot and evoking the
excitement of performing before an adult
audience tomorrow evening in the library. 104.
But it was Pierrot who spoke first.
105. 'I hate plays and all that sort of thing.'
106. 'I hate them too, and dressing up,' Jackson

said.
37
107. It had been explained at lunch that the

twins were to be distinguished by the fact that
Pierrot was missing a triangle of flesh from his
left ear lobe on account of a dog he had
tormented when he was three.
108. Lola looked away. 109. Briony said

reasonably, 'How can you hate plays?'
110. 'It's just showing off.' 111. Pierrot shrugged

as he delivered this self-evident truth.
112. Briony knew he had a point. 113. This was

precisely why she loved plays, or hers at least;
everyone would adore her. 114. Looking at the
boys, under whose chairs water was pooling
before spilling between the floorboard cracks,
she knew they could never understand her
ambition. 115. Forgiveness softened her tone.
116. 'Do you think Shakespeare was just

showing off?'
117. Pierrot glanced across his sister's lap

towards Jackson. 118. This warlike name was
faintly familiar, with its whiff of school and adult
certainty, but the twins found their courage in
each other.
119. 'Everyone knows he was.'
120. 'Definitely.'
121. When Lola spoke, she turned first to Pierrot

and halfway through her sentence swung round
to finish on Jackson. 122. In Briony's family, Mrs
Tallis never had anything to impart that needed
saying simultaneously to both daughters. 123.
Now Briony saw how it was done.
124. 'You'll be in this play, or you'll get a clout,

and then I'll speak to The Parents.'
125. 'If you clout us, we'll speak to The Parents.'
126. 'You'll be in this play or I'll speak to The

Parents.'
127. That the threat had been negotiated neatly

downwards did not appear to diminish its power.
128. Pierrot sucked on his lower lip.
129. 'Why do we have to?' 130. Everything was

conceded in the question, and Lola tried to ruffle
his sticky hair.
131. 'Remember what The Parents said? 132.

We're guests in this house and we make
ourselves - what do we make ourselves? 133.
Come on. 134. What do we make ourselves?'
38
135. 'A-menable,' the twins chorused in misery,

barely stumbling over the unusual word.
136. Lola turned to Briony and smiled. 137.

'Please tell us about your play.'
138. The Parents. 139. Whatever

institutionalised strength was locked in this
plural was about to fly apart, or had already
done so, but for now it could not be
acknowledged, and bravery was demanded of
even the youngest. 140. Briony felt suddenly
ashamed at what she had selfishly begun, for it
had never occurred to her that her cousins
would not want to play their parts in The Trials
of Arabella. 141. But they had trials, a
catastrophe of their own, and now, as guests in
her house, they believed themselves under an
obligation. 142. What was worse, Lola had made
it clear that she too would be acting on
sufferance. 143. The vulnerable Quinceys were
being coerced. 144. And yet, Briony struggled to
grasp the difficult thought, wasn't there
manipulation here, wasn't Lola using the twins
to express something on her behalf, something
hostile or destructive? 145. Briony felt the
disadvantage of being two years younger than
the other girl, of having a full two years'
refinement weigh against her, and now her play
seemed a miserable, embarrassing thing.
146. Avoiding Lola's gaze the whole while, she

proceeded to outline the plot, even as its
stupidity began to overwhelm her. 147. She no
longer had the heart to invent for her cousins
the thrill of the first night.
148. As soon as she was finished Pierrot said, 'I

want to be the count. 149. I want to be a bad
person.'
150. Jackson said simply, 'I'm a prince. 151. I'm

always a prince.'
152. She could have drawn them to her and

kissed their little faces, but she said, 'That's all
right then.'
153. Lola uncrossed her legs, smoothed her

dress and stood, as though about to leave. 154.
She spoke through a sigh of sadness or
resignation. 155. 'I suppose that because you're
the one who wrote it you'll be Arabella . .'
156. 'Oh no,' Briony said. 157. 'No. Not at all.'
158. She said no, but she meant yes. 159. Of

course she was taking the part of Arabella. 160.
What she was objecting to was Lola's 'because'.
161. She was not playing Arabella because she
wrote the play, she was taking the part because
39
no other possibility had crossed her mind,

because that was how Leon was to see her,
because she was Arabella.
162. But she had said no, and now Lola was
saying sweetly, 'In that case, do you mind if I
play her? 163. I think I could do it very well. 164.
In fact, of the two of us...'
165. She let that hang, and Briony stared at her,

unable to keep the horror from her expression,
and unable to speak. 166. It was slipping away
from her, she knew, but there was nothing that
she could think of to say that would bring it
back. 167. Into Briony's silence, Lola pressed her
advantage.
168. 'I had a long illness last year, so I could do

that part of it well too.'
169. Too? Briony could not keep up with the

older girl. 170. The misery of the inevitable was
clouding her thoughts.
171. One of the twins said proudly, 'And you

were in the school play.'
172. How could she tell them that Arabella was

not a freckled person? 173. Her skin was pale
and her hair was black and her thoughts were
Briony's thoughts. 175. But how could she
refuse a cousin so far from home whose family
life was in ruins? 176. Lola was reading her mind
because she now played her final card, the
unrefusable ace.
177. 'Do say yes. 178. It would be the only good

thing that's happened to me in months.'
179. Yes. 180. Unable to push her tongue

against the word, Briony could only nod, and felt
as she did so a sulky thrill of self-annihilating
compliance spreading across her skin and
ballooning outwards from it, darkening the room
in throbs. 181. She wanted to leave, she wanted
to lie alone, face-down on her bed and savour
the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back
down the lines of branching consequences to
the point before the destruction began. 182.
She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the
full richness of what she had lost, what she had
given away, and to anticipate the new regime.
183. Not only Leon to consider, but what of the
antique peach and cream satin dress that her
mother was looking out for her, for Arabella's
wedding? 184. That would now be given to Lola.
185. How could her mother reject the daughter
who had loved her all these years? 186. As she
saw the dress make its perfect, clinging fit
around her cousin and witnessed her mother's
heartless smile, Briony knew her only
40
reasonable choice then would be to run away, to

live under hedges, eat berries and speak to no
one, and be found by a bearded woodsman one
winter's dawn, curled up at the base of a giant
oak, beautiful and dead, and barefoot, or
perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with pink
ribbon straps...
41
Sources Cited
Chatman, S 1978 Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film
Ithica/London: Cornell Univ. Press
Leech, G & Short, M 1981 Style in Fiction: a Linguistic Introduction to English

Fictional Prose London: Longman
Liddel, Robert 1947 A Treatise on the Novel London: Jonathan Cape
Lodge, David 2002 Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays London: Secker
& Warburg
McEwan, Ian 2001 Atonement London: Vintage
Mitchell, David 2001 Number9Dream Polmont: Hodder & Stoughton
Simpson 1993 Language, Ideology & Point of View London: Routledge
Toolan, M R 2001 Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction (2nd ed) London:

Routledge
42
1
Notes
Number9Dream is orientated from the spatio-temporal setting of late-Twentieth Century Tokyo, a
Jamesonian postmodern city indexed by deictic items such as the coffee house (the Jupiter Café),
electronic gadgets like Lao Tzu’s vidboy (a thinly-veiled Nintendo Gameboy) and observations of
enormous dehumanising commotion: “Not a single person is standing still. 30. Rivers, snowstorms,
traffic, bytes, generations, a thousand faces per minute” (29-30). Under Liddel’s relations of setting to
plot and character, Number9Dream is ‘kaleidoscopic’, it shifts rapidly between the physical world and
the world of the imagination (1947, 124-5). Temporal and spatial deixis combine to make this highly
‘proximal’ (see Simpson 1993, 18).
2
FDT never extends to stream of consciousness, the ‘closest’ form of reporting. Though Eiji’s thoughts
are presented in the present tense and first-person, they are still ordered and grammaticised in a
conventional fashion.
3
Our sense of space is very much Eiji’s, as indicated by his verbal qualifiers: “A big Panasonic display”
(19), “A building as huge as the PanOpticon” (42).
4
The reader is aligned so closely to Eiji that it is difficult to differentiate definite FDT statements such
as:
My first morning in Tokyo, and I am already getting ahead of myself (11)

Quite a sight, this zirconium gothic skyscraper (16)
How do daydreams translate into reality? (37)
from PN:
The Jupiter cafe sloshes with lunch-hour laughter, Friday plottings, clinking saucers. Drones bark
into mobile phones. She-drones hitch up sagging voices to sound more feminine. Coffee, seafood
sandwiches, detergent, steam. I have an across-the-street view of the PanOpticon's main entrance.
(12-15)
I light a cigarette . . . and watch the traffic and passers-by on the intersection between Omekaido
Avenue and Kita Street. Pin-striped drones, a lip-pierced hairdresser, midday drunks, child-laden
housewives. Not a single person is standing still. (27-29)
The last instance seemingly combines PN with FDT, as it is not only an accurate description but a
modal statement expressing Eiji’s negative attitude towards Tokyo’s extreme bustle. In first person
discourse Free Direct Thought appears to be indistinct from Pure Narration, as all external events must
be perceived by the narrator and expressed in thought if they are to be described to the reader. FDT is
only set aside by obvious mediation such as the expressive aside “quite a sight” (16). Eiji’s presence is
constant in PN, in deliberate lexis choices such as his use of bark rather than speak to describe people
on mobile phones, indicating his country-boy disdain of urban behaviour (sentence 13). But he would
be unlikely to think in this kind of vocabulary when he perceived the people on the phone (if he
thought anything at all, as it is very difficult to establish what, if any, kind of cognitive experiences are
pre-linguistic). This is diegesis, told to us by Eiji, in the middle of what purports to be experiential,
mimetic text. What a reader easily interprets through the conventions of novel-writing does not unpack
satisfactorily on an extra-textual level. As Leech & Short put it: “the thoughts of characters . . . are
ultimately an artifice. We cannot see inside the minds of other people, but if the motivation for the
actions and attitudes of characters is to be made clear to the reader, the representation of their thoughts,
like the use of soliloquy on stage, is a necessary licence” (1981, 337).
5
Atonement is orientated from the spatio-temporal setting of an English Country house at the beginning
of the Twentieth Century, as indexed by deictic items such as a house library (43), bedrooms with
dressing tables (9), cocktails (15) and characteristically large families. These serve as a generic marker
of ‘the English Country House novel’, a mode utilised from Jane Austen to Agatha Christie, and
associated information from these texts is reapplied by the reader. As in Austen, the relationship of
setting to plot and character is ‘utilitarian’. It is minimally necessary, “simple, low-toned, descriptive
writing, intended to throw the human drama into relief” (Liddel 1947, 113-15). At points, however, it
becomes ‘symbolic’ (1947, 115), relating Briony’s organised space to her organised nature.
6
To fully convey the impact of Briony’s disillusionment in attempting to actually stage her play, the
text pace slows to ‘stretch’. During her free direct thought ‘yes’, which will mark her defeat, an
enormous amount of complex emotions strike Briony, including several proleptic scenes (running
away, hiding in her room, her mother’s neglect and ultimately her death) must happen in moments.
7
Other characters are portrayed foremost through Briony’s FIT, our opinion of them is initially
conditioned by Briony’s: “Cecilia's enthusiasm, for example, seemed a little overstated, tainted with
condescension perhaps, and intrusive too” (46)
8
The (relative) preponderance of discourse over story in Atonement is a feature of this extract, rather
than the novel as a whole. Its purpose is to give the reader such a sense of Briony’s mindset that they
understand her subsequent behaviour, which results in Robbie Turner being sent to prison for rape. The
interiority of young Briony is never investigated in this kind of detail again, instead moving around
other character’s consciousness to observe events.
9
To use Simpson’s typology of narrative modes, Atonement oscillates between types B(R) and B(N)
(that is, third person character-mediated narration or entirely impersonal third person narration) (see
Toolan 2001, 70). Both are positively modalised, demonstrating an ‘objective’ view of character and a
definite purpose.
10
Her toys are not so much organised, as a direct representation of her desire for order and control.
Metaphor and similie are used to turn what are effectively relational processes (“Her room was tidy.
Her toy animals and dolls were well organised”) into the dynamic material processes of break, instruct,
touch and awaiting:
the model farm spread across a deep window ledge consisted of the usual animals, but all facing
one way - towards their owner - as if about to break into song . . . Her straight-backed dolls in
their many-roomed mansion appeared to be under strict instructions not to touch the walls; the
various thumb-sized figures to be found standing about her dressing table - cowboys, deep-sea
divers, humanoid mice - suggested by their even ranks and spacing a citizen's army awaiting
orders (18-20).
11
Briony’s discourse is undermined, finally, by other character-alignments. In Number9Dream the sole
character-viewpoint is Eiji’s, despite the presence of fifteen other characters (see Fig 3). This is not the
case in Atonement where traces of Emily Tallis and the twins’ thoughts are reported. As Leech and
Short put it, “even by the mere use of thought act reporting, [a writer] is inviting us to see things from
that character’s point of view” (1981, 338). When Briony shows her play to her mother, the pace slows
from summary to scene for the first time, to allow what is undoubtedly a report of FIT:
She took her daughter in her arms, onto her lap - ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered
from its infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite yet - and said that the play was 'stupendous'
(11)
The use of dashes demonstrates a shift to Emily Tallis’ direct perceptions, still more so the internal
marker of emotion ah. This thought confirms what the reader has probably already interpreted of
Briony, that her bold drama marks the naivety and powerlessness of a child. The reporting of the twins’
FIT contributes to the impression that Briony, as a child, has a limited view of the outside world:
Pierrot glanced across his sister's lap towards Jackson. This warlike name [“Shakespeare”] was
faintly familiar, with its whiff of school and adult certainty, but the twins found their courage in
each other. (117-18).
This thought process indicates a whole world that is very different to Briony’s. Shakespeare does not
connotate joyous cultural value to the twins, but school. While Shakespeare symbolises the freedom to
express oneself through writing for Briony, for them it is a form of oppression, indissolubly tied an
external adult world The narrator makes Briony’s alienation from the external world even explicit in an
external, heterodiegetic aside: “Like re-armament and the Abyssinia Question and gardening, it was
simply not a subject” (72).
12
However transitivity processes are not as useful in other texts, as Eiji’s mode of presentation often
elipts processes which are interpreted from the dialogue, and often opts to perceive actions which have
happened due to his material processes. So instead of saying “I shot the telephone” he says the
telephone “explodes in a plastic supernova” (297)
13
The PanOpticon is itself intertextual, a reference to Nineteenth Century prisons where every prisoner is
under constant surveillance. As Akiko Kato says, “We saw you coming!” (356)
14
The embedded narrative layer has its own chronology, even its own external homodiegetic analepsis:
“I paid the finest freelance master hacker in Tokyo a fortune for those nine numbers”.
15
The foregrounding of narrative construction is not only described as a facet of Eiji’s narration, but
also as an inherent property of the consumer-capitalist world. Eiji attempts to construct his identity by
smoking a brand called Kool, a straightforward representation of the semes (signifieds of connotation)
utilised in the world of advertising, where a brand name is created by nominalising an attractive
attribute (with associated pop culture misspelling). It echoes Martin Amis’ nominalising of attributes to
name cars in Money, where the central protagonist rides a Fiasco. Here the associated detail that this
was “the brand chosen by a biker ahead of me in the queue” (97) indicates the type of image that Eiji is
trying to cultivate, connotating the ‘typical’ idolising nature of an adolescent. This nominalising
process is not restricted to Eiji, however. Akiko Kato’s obsession with her “Van Gogh” (301)
demonstrates that the same process occurs in the adult world, masking aesthetic objects with
nominalised connotations of false value systems.
16
If a character is defined by a sole trait, they are the ultimate ‘flat’ character in EM Forster’s terms (see
Chatman 1978, 132). By contrast the waitress ‘with the perfect neck’ is full of indeterminancies, and
will develop into a ‘round’ character as the novel progresses.
17
This micro-linguistic strategy of symbolic construction serves a particularly postmodern purpose. It is
metafictional in that it draws attention to the fact that our perception is this novel is entirely
conditioned by Eiji’s perceptions.
18
The idea that Eiji is constructing himself through his discourse reaches new complexity on the level of
the adventure story, in which he plays out another identity (Ran Sogabe) which, in itself, has two layers
(Ran is imitated by Joji, ‘Ran’s apprentice’). Unpacked, Eiji is pretending to be a proleptic version of
himself who is pretending to be a fishtank repairman who is in turn pretending to be another fishtank
repairman.
The repetitive frequency of the opening lines of the extract (lines 1-8 are repeated as lines 260-
271, in a slightly refined version), seemingly shifted from an imagined to a real context the second
time, emphasise the crucial elements of Eiji’s characterisation – he is Eiji Miyake, he does not know
the identity of his father, and he is in Tokyo to find this out. This is expanded as a theme, through the
use of a lexical cohesive chain relating to identity:
I know your name, and you knew mine, once upon a time (2)
Eiji Miyake. Yes, that Eiji Miyake. (2-3)
You know his name and you know his address (6)
they know who ushered them on to Earth (34)
sipping from this part of the bowl constitutes a kiss with a stranger (95)
State your name (118)
My name is Ran Sogabe (123)
'That was the access code I was given by Ms' - a doleful glance at my clipboard - 'Akiko Kato
(159)
What did you say your name was?' (166)
but I have to insist on your name for our legal waiver form.' (177)
If my hacker got my alias wrong too, I am already burger-meat. (185)
'Let me guess! Kazuyo, Kazuyo, am I right?' (205)
'Your name is?' (209)
'Ran's apprentice! Joji. (210)
Mr Joii, I have to ask you for a retinal scan.' (226)
'Goldfish Pal, Ms Kato!' (241)
'You are not the ordinary fish man.' (254)
'I am no fish man at all.' (257)
I know your name, and you knew mine, once upon a time (261)
.Eiji Miyake. Yes, that Eiji Miyake. (262-3)
You know his name and you know his address (269)
'Eiji Miyake?' (274)
'Not Luke Skywalker? 278.Not Zax Omega? (277)
Were news of his whored bastard offspring brat - you, that is - to leak out (316)
MIYAKE - EIJI - PATERNITY. (346)
'A bioborg, dummy! 354.A replicant! (353)
Our spy picked you up in Jupiter Cafè - the old man you bought cigarettes for (357)
A Zuvre at this range will scramble your face so badly your own mother wouldn't recognize you.
But then, that never was her strong point, was it?' (362-3)
'You an industrial spy, or what?' (396)
'The gun is registered under Akiko Kato's name.' (444)
'Here he is. His name, his face, his house, who he is, what he is. (482-3)
EIJI MIYAKE. IDENTITY OF FATHER (487-8)
19
The repetitive frequency of Lao Tzu’s comment, occurring immediately before and after descent into
the imagined narrative level, serves as a marker of the third (narrative) layer, another form of bathos
which implies that excitement in the superordinate world can only be found by entering an embedded
narrative layer, by immersing oneself in a game.

1st Person Narration in Atonement and Number9Dream

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1st Person Narration in Atonement and Number9Dream

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Narrative Analysis: First Assessed Essay

Module Title Narrative Analysis

Module Tutor Carmen Coulthard & Malcom Coulthard

Question How is point of view handled in text or texts of your choice?

Title Narrators As Characters In Two Psychological Novels Of 2001

Narrators as Characters in Two Psychological

1 The Significance of Point of View

1.2 Perception and Reporting in Atonement: Focalisation

1.3 ‘Psychological’ Novels and the Predominance of Discourse over

2 Interpretation Against the Narrator/Focalised

sentence identifier rel. pro. identified identifier

21 A taste for was one aspect of an orderly A taste for the

22 Another was a passion for secrets Another [aspect of her

2.2 Reading Against Eiji Miyake’s Discourse

sentence agen mat.pro medium-t circ.

81 I stalk [the waitresses] home [am a psycho

153 I paid the finest freelance [in Tokyo a

237 I pepper her neck with enough

(5 & 268) I find my father [am in Tokyo to]

279 you reduce me [Akiko Kato] [to me to a state of

284 you intimidate me [Akiko Kato] [expect to]

292 you [are] threatening me [Akiko Kato]

336 I wheel her body [Akiko Kato] into the corner

374 I kick her head [Akiko Kato]

374 I uppercut her [Akiko Kato] over the half-

385 I summon the elevator

412 I beam at Ice Maiden [could be

429 ‘you are trying to me [Ice Maiden]

3 Narrative Layers & Characterisation

3.1 Eiji’s Internal Narrative

Professional Position Character Trait Nominalisation

Waitress one has a braying, donkey Donkey (50, 53, 90)

[Security woman on An ice maiden appears on Ice Maiden (capitalised by

This reification of character traits creates relatively ‘flat’ characters16, as it naturalises

3.2 The Trials Of Arabella: Briony’s Internal Narratives

applicable to her closing fantasy of self-annihilation, which is effectively an amalgam

3.3 Genre Appropriation and Internalisation

watched Bladerunner?” (277, 355). She presents, in direct speech, a movie/airport-

Fig 1: Diagram of Narrative Levels in Number9Dream

(Derived from the structure laid down in Chatman 1978, 26)

Fig 2: Diagram of Narrative Levels in Atonement

Addressee 4a Addressers 4a Addressees 4a

† Named after character Manifestation TEXT, verbal. ‘A Novel

Fig 4: Diagram of Narrative Elements In Atonement impetuous dashing

Leon Tallis (Brion

Setting Mrs Tallis’ bedro

Story elements, Eleven-year old Briony Talli

Manifestation TEXT, verbal. ‘A Novel

empress by now with slaves to fetch your meals.

else I am a psycho waiting to stalk them home.

108.PanOticon's lobby - cavernous as the belly

overawed yokel. 122.'Afternoon. 123.My name is

125.She frowns. 126.Excellent. 127.She's only

129.'Not seen our ad, ma'am?' 130.I sing a

131.Why are you requesting access to

132.I act puzzled. 133.'I service Osugi and

134.'Osugi and Bosugi.'

135I check my clipboard. 136.'That's the

137.'I'm scanning some curious objects in your

138.'Newly imported from Germany, ma'am.

142.'Place your right hand on the access

143.'I hope this is going to tickle.'

144.'That is your left hand.'

146.A brief eternity elapses before a green