'Saint Maybe' and 'Atonement': Childhood, Compensation, and Characters' Fates Caitlyn Nicole Weinstein 12th Grade

What does atonement mean to you? Each individual person will have to make up for something they have done at some point in their lifetime. Are you seeking atonement to be free from the burden of your sin in your everyday life? Maybe, you are seeking atonement to ensure your freedom in the afterlife. In either case, atonement is a personal journey to ultimately right a wrong. Just as every sin is different, so is everyone’s way of making up for them. Even though humans are very different in this sense, the reasons for what makes someone sin may not be so different from the next person. However, where people start the same, does not always mean they will end in the same place. One might be feeling more at peace than the other, even though their stories may have seen similar. This is demonstrated in the novels Atonement and Saint Maybe. Anne Tyler’s Ian Bedloe and Ian McEwan’s Briony Tallis directly feel the weight of their sins on their shoulders as each character sets out to atone for what they have done. In the novels Atonement by Ian McEwan and Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler, the main characters stories are connected through their similar mentalities, limited understanding of the adult world, and their atonement methods. However,...