After recently watching the movie Atonement, I began to wonder what the meaning of the word really was. The definition of the word is this: satisfaction or reparations for a wrong or injury; amends. When I look at this, then look at the movie, then look into life, I begin to wonder how this all fits in to real life.
The main thing of the movie is that the young girl speaks wrongly of a man, putting him through more pain than anything. This wrong was, well, wrong, and for the rest of her life she finds herself paying for it. In one part, the girl comes forward when she is older and says that she is wrong and that she is willing to clear his name. This doesn't particularly make this man happy. Is there an age when you are able to come forward when you are wrong? Shouldn't you be able to admit it as soon as you realize it? This is one of the themes that I got from this.
Atonement describes the end of paying for one's wrongs. But how do you go about surviving through it? If the crime that you commit, whether legal or not, is so great that it causes you to toss and turn at night, when do you know to come forward? And what happens when the ability to come forward isn't present?
I've looked through culture and found in more than one show, there are reasons I'd find that I'd have to atone for. Perhaps one of those that sticks out the most in my mind are those in shows such as CSI and The Closer. In these, people often lie and cheat to stay out of jail and put those that are innocent in. Do they feel any guilt? I can't imagine going to sleep knowing that someone was in jail that didn't deserve to be there.
Atonement, though, doesn't have to be for things that have to do with crime and lying. Sometimes it's the simple friendships that are broken. Everyone has that one moment that they aren't sure what they'd do with. And at the moment, I wonder if I'll be atoning for this.
One of my friends recently got involved in drugs and smoking, things that will eventually start to ruin her health. She'd been having mood swings and freaked out all the time. It just wasn't the girl that I knew. So all of her friends got together, and we did something about it. And now she hates us. She doesn't get that what we did, we did for her own good. She doesn't get that why we did was because we care about her. She's been pushing people away and refuses to acknowledge that we are her friends and the ones that love her. I know that we made the right choice. But how long will it be before she realizes this, too?
Overall, I'm not sure which one of this will be atoning. I feel horrible and bad and like I lost one of my best friends (which I did). But if she realizes that what we did, we did for her, will she be the one whos starts atoning? Will her friends' friendships mean more to her than her drugs and her hatred? I don't know. I'd rather that none of us had anything to atone for.
Resources
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atonement
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=1611 by Paul Mah. Faulty Forensic Test Put Innocents In Jail Over Decades.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
