Love & Friendship text analysis - Essay Example

To her, Robbie is a sex-crazed maniac who is out to hurt her sister. Her accusation lands Robbie a jail-term. However, with age she comes to terms with her mistake and leads her life wishing for atonement, and this makes her writes to the end. All the events in the novel can be attributed to the failure of the older generation. Therefore, this paper shall seek to explain the extent to which the older generation’s failure contributed to the events of the story. The novel centers on the youth and adolescents facing challenges as a result of their parents’ failures.

For instance, Briony’s cousins’ Lola, Pierrot, and Jackson visit the Tallis’s home for summer since their parents, Cecil Quincey and Hermoine are having problems in their marriage. They are giving their parents time to work out their differences and probably revert back their idea of having a divorce. It is during this visit that Lola gets raped and Robbie is accused of the crime. Chances are high that if Lola’s parents were in a healthy relationship, then they could have not visited the Tallis’s home during summer since they could be spending time together as a family.

On the other hand, if they had not visited Tallis’s home, then Lola could have not been raped and Robbie could not have been sent to prison. The Talli’s family members are not happy as a family since their parents are not always there for them. Jack Tallis, the head of the family is always in London working and does not get time to visit or spend quality time with his family. McEwan asserts, “…and the old man is staying in town. He might come later” (48). The whole household misses his presence, and everything that goes wrong is attributed to the fact that he is not around.

Briony explains that her father’s presence always changed the family’s atmosphere. She asserts, “Whenever he was around, the house settled on a fixed point” (McEwan 122). In as much as he spent his time at home in the library