In Ian McEwan's award-winning novel, Atonement, young Briony Tallis must try to make amends for her wrongdoings towards her older sister Cecelia and her love interest, Robbie. At the end of the novel, the short twenty-page coda entitled "London, 1999" proves surprisingly necessary for the novel's final realizations to fully occur. Although some would argue that the coda is unnecessary and ruins the fairy tale ending that McEwan had previously set up for his novel, the information revealed in this short final section of the novel provides a sense of closure. The necessity is revealed through Briony's words, actions, and ultimate revelation of her final motive. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The developing closure involves Cecilia and Robbie, Paul and Lola, and Briony herself. Before the coda, the reader is led to believe that Cecilia and Robbie, after their lives were separated by imprisonment and war, have reunited and live happily ever after: a happy ending one would expect in n any stereotypical novel. In the coda, however, Briony casually reveals that the two lovers met an untimely end because of the war: "I can no longer think what good it would be if, say, I tried to persuade my reader, in that means directly or indirectly that Robbie Turner died of septicemia at Bray Dunes on June 1, 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in September of that year by the bomb which destroyed Balham tube station” (McEwan, 350). This is a great shock to the reader, who has now gained a sense of belonging and feeling towards the characters. Another surprising aspect is revealed in the coda: the endings of Paul Marshall and his wife, Briony's cousin Lola. Paul is much older than Lola and is now eighty years old. Lola, on the other hand, is only seventy years old and much more agile and younger than her male counterpart; she was “always as slim and fit as a racing dog, and always faithful” (337). This liveliness upsets Briony. She even goes so far as to compare Lola to the famous evil villain Cruella De Vil. Lola's liveliness irritates Briony because she knows she cannot publish the final version of her novel until all the parties mentioned are dead, for fear of being heavily sued for defamation: "I could survive Paul Marshall , but Lola would definitely outlive me. The consequences are clear… As my editor once said, publication equals litigation” (338-339). She is very afraid that Lola will survive her and that in turn, her literature, and therefore the truth, will never be published for the whole world to see; his atonement will never be accomplished. The reader is introduced to Briony's new purpose in life (or the purpose of continuing her life in general) in the coda. She has to get the novel published, one way or another. It is through this novel that Briony believes she has righted the wrongs of her childhood. Can we really atone for our sins through a work of fiction? In a sense, it would be easy to say yes, provided the information in the story is factual. But therein lies the extremely obvious problem: how do we know what is “real” and what is completely fictional? We must of course view the events of the coda with a grain of salt. This is all fictional, of course, invented by Ian McEwan. However, one can't help but feel somewhat confused about the progression of the novel within the novel. Briony raises her own question about this when she asks: "How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power to decide the outcomes, she..