Atonement is a bildungsroman written by McEwan in 2001, regarding the awareness of self-atonement and the responding to the requirement for inpidual atonement. Atonement was extensively believed as one of McEwan’s best works; it was listed for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction.  The Times listed Atonement in its list of the 100 best English-language books since 1923. 

Atonement is a full-length novel. This novel mainly tells a story about the heroine Briony. Briony makes a blunder because of her innocence and rich imagination, which ruins her sister Cecilia and the son of their housekeeper Robbie’s lives. When Briony grows up, she realizes her blunder and continues to look for forgiveness for her misdeed.

1.2 Literature Review

As the finest contemporary British writer of his generation, Ian McEwan is referred to as “English’s national author” by The New Yorker magazine. Also, his works are shortlisted in quite a few literature awards and enjoy wild readership. Atonement, published in 2001, is considered as his most appealing and successful novel during Ian McEwan’s literary career. So many literary critics have already studied Ian McEwan’s Atonement from different perspectives. 

First, most critics pay much attention on the controversial confessional theme of Atonement. D’hoker Elke points out that Ian McEwan’s Atonement is a special case of penitent novels. In his thesis “Confession and Atonement in contemporary Fiction: JM.Coetzee, John Banville, and Ian McEwan”, he explains the difference between literary confession and religious confession.

Moreover, psychological researches about the protagonist Briony have done by many scholars. In Atonement, like other books written by Ian McEwan, the growth and maturity of adolescence is the theme of this novel. Several literary critics regard Atonement as a Bildungsroman, for it shows the psychological and moral growth of Briony from youth to adulthood. They interpret Briony’s growing process of atonement: from a thirteen-year-old girl full of fantasies to a nurse who tries to atone by healing injured soldiers and writing novels. 

Also, some scholars emphasized the metafictional features of Atonement. Han Jie’s paper “On the Metafictionality of Atonement” is intended to make an analysis of the metafictional features of Atonement in the light of post-modern narrative theories, regarding both metafiction and postmodernism. And Hu Xiuling thinks that physical space is an important element in constructing the plot of the stories. And she believes that Briony’s fault is caused by the secluded environment. Li Chao thinks that the class system serves as the driving force for the Tallises’ acceptance that Robbie is the rapist. And he thinks that Robbie becomes the sacrifice and scapegoat of the social hierarchy. Zhu Fuxiao writes “Scapegoat and Jesus Christ is the Biblical Archetypes of Robbie” in his work, A Biblical Archetypal Analysis of Atonement. He thinks that Robbie was born in a humble family and he grew into an excellent young man though he lacked his father’s love. Zhu Fuxiao believes that when people analyze Robbie from the biblical angle of view, the parallelism between Jesus Christ and Robbie becomes apparent.  From his point of view, Robbie’s and Jesus’s images may seem alike, which is different from my opinion. Robbie and Jesus do have something in common, but they have a big difference. The difference is whether they resurrect in the end.

So many literary critics have already studied Ian McEwan’s Atonement from different perspectives. However, it still leaves some untouched space for further study. Previous researches about Atonement mainly focus on the heroine and narrator of this novel, Briony. But the character of Robbie is rarely discussed, let alone a study of Robbie from Scapegoat Mechanism. This is an area which has been grossly neglected. From my point of view, however, it is worthwhile to be analyzed. By this research, we can clearly realize that this tragedy is not only caused by Briony’s innocence, but also caused by the rigid social hierarchy during that time and the war. As a sinless scapegoat, Robbie suffers a lot during his whole life. Through this research, we may have a deeper understanding of the character of Robbie from a different perspective. This thesis will analyze the image of Robbie as a scapegoat from the perspective of Rene Girard’s scapegoat theory.