“Atonement” revolves around the choices made by the character I’d like to focus on, Briony Tallis. I feel that Briony strongly falls into the definition of what Kiersey classifies as the Artisan temperament. More specifically, I believe she is of the role variant of Performer, classified by the acronym of ESFP (or "SP").Beyond the obvious reasons I believe she is an Artisan (her obvious talent for writing opens the movie, producing a play in which she intends her visiting cousins to perform), Briony’s other actions strongly support her classification in the SP role variant. Artisan Performers live in the moment, living life to its fullest.
ESFPs make decisions based on their feelings, their own personal standards. They are defined by being acutely attuned to the environment around them, being keen observers. And it is Briony’s observation from afar (albeit incorrect) of her older sister’s Cecilia interaction with Robbie at the fountain that sparks the misconstrued assumption that Robbie is a man of ulterior motives.Briony’s real ESFP traits are brought to the forefront when she relates to the police whom she believes she witnessed raping her visiting cousin Lola in the garden. Here we see Briony no doubt performing, relishing in what she has observed, saying “I saw him, I saw him with my own eyes”.
Here she is in her element; expressing her feeling and sensing traits, performing for the police and convicting Robbie, all the while empathizing with her cousin Lola and sister Cecilia. Also important in this transgression is the fact that Briony is completely unable to weigh and evaluate the long-term effects of her incorrect admission as Robbie as her cousin’s rapist. She acted on her short-term needs (protecting her sister from a “sex maniac” as well as “punishing” Robbie for her unrequited crush on him). Both of these traits are ESFP specific. Particularly in an Artisan who hasn’t fully developed their senses, as such is the case in 13 year old Briony.As she grows older and of course more keenly develops her feeling senses, Briony fully realizes the weight of this grave error.
This clearly affects not only the lives of Cecilia and Robbie, but hers as well. She responds to her transgression by actually defining atonement through action, which is “reparation for an offense or injury”. Subsequently, Briony spends the rest of her life making reparation for her mistake, beginning by refusing her place at Cambridge University and becoming a nurse instead. Cecilia supports this when she writes in a letter to Robbie, “She's doing nurse's training at my old hospital.
I think she may be doing this as some kind of penance.”Much later in life (and in the movie) we learn that Briony’s last act of reparation is that of her final novel “Atonement”, in which she states in an interview, “So, my sister and Robbie were never able to have the time together they both so longed for... and deserved.
Which ever since I've always felt I prevented. But what sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I'd like to think this isn't weakness or..
. evasion... but a final act of kindness. I gave them their happiness.
”And so, even while Briony has bestowed this last act of kindness, she is still serving her Artisan Performer temperament. This is clear by her not only writing the novel, but by imagining and composing the closure for herself and ultimately, the happiness Cecilia and Robbie never had together.I feel that Cecilia and Robbie’s forlorn love is what drives this movie and is what I also find the most personally engrossing. At the same time, this is not a story for the weak of heart; I find it almost painful to travel along with the main characters through their quest for peace.
