Briony & Me

I've just finished a marvelous book, Atonement, by Ian McEwan. It was very well-written, with just enough descriptive words to make sure it wasn't overly straightforward, without it being horribly wordy. The main character is Briony Tallis, who is 13 years old for the majority of the novel. She is the one character who continued to draw me in- whenever the point of view switched to any other character, I read a little more quickly, in hopes that I could reach another part of the book where it would once again be told from her mind. I found myself connecting with so many of the insights that Briony discovered, and I think I'm quite a bit like her. One of my favorite parts happens when she contemplates her vast and complex insight of the world around her. She marvels at it and wonders if others share the same abilities. The strange thing is, I have so often wondered the very same thing. Are my senses, which seem so keen and adept, really the same as everyone else's? Or do they hold some sort of superiority over the senses of others? Here is what Briony wonders:

These thoughts were as familiar to her, and as comforting, as the precise configuration of her knees, their matching but competing, symmetrical and reversible, look. A second thought always followed the first, one mystery bred another: Was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face? Did everybody, including her father, Betty, Hardman? If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. Briony was surrounded by machines, intelligent and pleasant enought on the outside, but lacking the bright and private inside feeling she had. This was sinister and lonely, as well as unlikely. For, though it offended her sense of order, she knew it was overwhelmingly probable that everyone else had thoughts like hers. She knew this, but only in a rather arid way; she didn't really feel it.

I have felt the very same way, when overwhelmed by my senses and emotions, although I could never get it into words. Certainly others share it, like authors, musicians, and artists, but what about all the other people on this earth who do not happen to be such? I am sure that everyone feels very much, very strongly, although it is not always evident. Perhaps some people express it in ways not thought of, in subtlety and nuance. And perhaps even more take pleasure in not flaunting the complexities of their minds, unlike the many poets and artists. Perhaps, but because of this nature, it can never be certain.