Narrator and point of view

The narrator is a central element of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement. At first, it appears that the events of the story are narrated by an omniscient third-person narrator. 

The narrator has access to the thoughts and feelings of multiple characters. For example, in the first part of the novel, each chapter presents the perspective of a different character: chapter three focuses on Briony’s perspective, chapter four on Cecilia’s, while chapter five shows Lola and Paul Marshall’s. 

At times, the narrator also presents the thoughts of the characters in a stream-of-consciousness style. This is perhaps best seen in chapter six, in which Emily Tallis is lying in bed with a migraine. The chapter includes no “action” as Emily is lying in bed with her eyes closed the entire time and it simply follows her train of thought:

She had ordered a roast for this evening and it w...