Who is really guilty?

Briony spends her entire life trying to atone for accusing Robbie of a crime he didn't commit and for ruining Robbie's and Ceceila's chance for love and happiness. She certainly feels guilty, but is she really responsible for this crime of was her crime unintentional and not premeditated? Briony was a victim of her own imagination. As a precocious child immersed in literature and fairy tales, she constructed her world according to the fiction she read. Order was achieved through a set of black and white rules and life had to fit that framework. In Briony's world, there was the princess stolen away by the evil "maniac," and the prince who saves the princess from an evil fate (after he saves her from drowning). Thus, when Briony inadvertently sees Ceceila and Robbie at the fountain, she can only interpret the scenario in one way as she forces the scenario to fit into her view of the world which she has created through the stories she has read. She knows no better and should not be expected to know better. But when events do not unfold as she expected (ie. Ceceila being rescued from the fountain, followed by a proposal), and when she reads Robbie's sexually explicit note, she can only now cast Robbie into the role of the evil "maniac," a role she feels was always his and that she had just missed the signs. So even though Briony thought that " for now it could no longer be fairy tale castles and princesses, but that her writing had now matured to a new level - that she had "privileged access across the years to adult behavior," she is still a child and still forcing what she sees in the world according to the princesses and bad guys. Her actions are also motivated by her own desire to write. Briony is so convinced that Robbie is the evil maniac, she feels she must protect her sister. However, she is a victim of her background of fiction and thus it was so "easy to get everything wrong." It is easy to convince herself that Lola's attacker was Robbie and as a child, it was hard once the investigations intensified to extricate herself from her accusations. Once she was able to realize what she had done, her guilt is so overwhelming that she pends the rest of her life trying to atone for her crime by the only way she really knows how - by writing the story of what happened, specifically writing the story "from three points of view...to show separate minds, as alive as her own," to suffer by understanding exactly what Robbie and Ceceila felt and went through because of her. Writing has caused Briony to lie, and writing is the only way she knows how to atone for her sin. But even her writing must be falsified to make her achieve her goal.
(As an aside, I think it is interesting that McEwan has chosen to contrive his own writing of the story to help reinforce Briony's views of Robbie as a monster. When Robbie emerges from the woods with the twins, he appears as if he were a gigantic monster because he has one of the twins on his shoulders. This depiction again reinforces for Briony that Robbie must me the evil one who committed the crime and MCEwan by describing Robbie that way forces him into that role.)
But who should really be guilty in this novel? Commenting on the social evils of the time, McEwan, through Emily Tallis and both Lola and Marshall, reveals the ills of class superiority in England. Emily Tallis is perfectly content to see Robbie accused of the crime and is blinded by her own prejudices of her superiority over the gardener's son. She has always resented that her husband paid for Robbie's education and snobbishly comments that it was a fancy of her husband. In the last section, McEwan paints Lola as a Cruella DeVille "the guant figure, the black coat, the lurid lips." Although Lola and Marshall are huge philanthropists, Briony comments that perhaps he has given away so much money "spending a life time trying to make amends." But the other option that Briony suggests is most like the truth - "or perhaps he just swept onward without a thought, to live the life that was always his." The Marshalls are definitely guilty of the crime, but because of their place in society, they will be protected.
Although Ceceila is cast as a victim, she too in reality, cannot escape her own notions of class and is convinced that the gardener Danny was guilty.

Meta-Analysis Response S&F

Coming to Know Your Process as a Writer: Meta-Analysis
After many years of composing five paragraph thesis driven essays from a straightforward 45 min CAPT essay in 6th grade to last year’s research paper, I was taught a formulaic process to write an effective essay. The importance of a thesis sentence, supporting paragraphs with “blended” quotations, and a conclusion that effectively summed up the thesis was drummed into my head. Thus, when assigned to write an exploratory essay, the inverse of a thesis essay, on a novel as complicated as The Sound and the Fury, I struggled with my first draft to escape my habitual writing style and instead attempted to write as if I were thinking through possible answers to a question I was posing about the novel.
As I now look over my first draft and the comments attached to it, I realize that my first draft was a victim of how I usually compose an essay. Despite how much I tried, I could not escape the thesis based approach. I recognized this even when I handed in the essay for I wrote as criticism, “Are there too many examples and is this too thesis based?” In this second draft, I have tried to follow your advice, “TAKE SOME CHANCES.” As you suggested, I flipped around my ending using Juliet’s rhetorical question “What’s in a name?” as my introduction. Instead of ending the first question with an answer, I ended it with the question I was going to explore. Similarly, at the end of the second paragraph, I removed the last line that yes, “reeked of a thesis based essay.” (Just couldn’t contain myself from including it the first time around!) and tried to take some more chances in the third paragraph by concluding with a new question, “If one is tied to his or her name, then is it synonymous with identity formation?”
What about content? Yes, too many examples and as you commented, “sounds too much like a list.” My standard approach to writing is to have lots of examples to support my thesis. I had just recently been discussing how some tribes in Africa name their children and I “stuck” this paragraph about names to proclaim one’s achievements in my first draft trying to make it work. Rereading, I realized this was off topic and yes, “random” (but interesting). Similarly, I felt the Kennedy paragraph on rewriting the second draft unnecessary, so I eliminated that one too and tried to return to The Sound and the Furry and include a paragraph about the name Quentin and the burden that the younger Quentin assumed by being named after her uncle who committed suicide. Trying to again take a chance, I allowed myself to let this lead into the question whether one can form one’s own identity and escape one’s name.
My goals are to be less formulated in my thinking and my writing so I can develop content in a more sophisticated manner. Again this goes back to taking chances with my writing, not always an easy task when you have relied on formulas in the past that has been successful.

What we know about Briony now

Briony clearly is most comfortable in a world that is "neat, limited and controlled" and totally understandable, which is why she is happiest with the written word that she can as if by "telepathy" transfer exactly what she means to her reader. It is the world of a child since it follows definite rules and for her there is a logical sequence, i.e. a drowning scene followed by a marriage proposal. When things do not follow this order, she does not understand and considers these events to be part of the adult world, which is clearly a different world than the world of a child. Briony longs to understand and be part of that adult world, but still a child and clearly not mature enough to be an adult, she just jumps to conclusions, without really questioning or taking the time to find the truth. The world is black and white for her and she assumes certain things right away (ie. that Robbie had somehow threatened Cecelia and had some power over her), which is why she does not have the ability to tell the truth later on. As she watches the scene between Robbie and Cecelia at the fountain, she believes that she is getting a glimpse of the adult world.
Briony watching the fountain scene is comparable to Briony's view of what happen when watching a play, as opposed to reading a novel, in which things can go wrong because of misunderstandings between what the playwright intended and what the audience observes. Briony totally misinterprets the scene she is watching, but does not realize it. As Briony watches Robbie and Cecelia, just as what can happen in a play, "the symbols were unravelled." As a result, she tumbles (as she states, "by chance") into the adult world and sets in motion what is no longer a life of "fairy tale castles and princesses," but one in which she "gets everything wrong" and as a result has total destructive power over Robbie's and Cecelia's lives.