“Most important to crime writing is the sense that there will be a resolution and the criminal punished” Explore the significance of resolution in 2 crime texts you have studied.

This is an example of a 25 mark AQA question. A typical answer would be around two to three pages long, and would thoroughly consider both sides of the argument, while continuing to present a sustained judgement throughout. Therefore, I instead intend to present a condensed response, giving an idea of what you might include when considering the significance of resolution in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.
Resolution in Brighton Rock, is key to the author’s didactic message. Pinkie receives what we can assume is divine retribution: “It was as if the flames had literally got him”. This reinforces Brighton Rock as a morality text. Pinkie serves as the moral figure, being used to deter the reader from a life of crime and sin. Not only is does Pinkie receive physical punishment: “he screamed and screamed”, but he also receives the ultimate punishment of being “whipped away into zero - nothing”. Pinkie’s becomes subject to what he feared the most; his legacy will be forgotten and he will leave nothing behind.However, Pinkie’s punishment can be viewed as insufficient. He never receives punishment from the law. Though he suffers momentarily, it is the other characters in the novel, such as Rose, who suffer the most as a result of his crimes.By chapter 11, the final chapter, we learn that Ida’s attempts to save Rose from the clutches of Pinkie have failed. Rose is not liberated by the death of Pinkie: “I’m not asking for absolution. I don’t want absolution. I want to be like him – damned.” Even after Pinkie’s death, Rose wants to be part of the criminal underworld, with the hope that one day she will join him in hell.
In Atonement, the purpose of the resolution is different. McEwan looks at the sense of resolution for both the characters and the readers. The characters Robbie and Cecilia are given a fictional resolution through Briony. In Briony’s own novel, she shows herself confronting Robbie and Cecilia, telling them she will confess to her own crimes and testify against Paul Marshall. Moreover, she gives them a happy ending. Briony parallels this fictional ending with her earlier pieces of literature which she describes in the novel: “she herself had written a tale in which a humble woodcutter saved a princess from drowning and ended by marrying her”. Briony has always yearned for a happy ending, and thus she gives Robbie and Cecilia what she describes as “a final act of kindness” by giving “them happiness”. Therefore, the novel itself becomes the way in which Briony achieves a sense of resolution.Though Briony achieves a resolution for the characters, and thus for her own readers, McEwan does not create a sense of resolution for us as the reader. In the final part, (London -1999), McEwan reveals Briony as the true author of the novel, greatly changing the readers perspective. The readers become victims of Briony’s imagination. Contrary to the happy ending we believed Robbie and Cecilia received, we learn they both tragically died. There stories were cut short, and justice could now never be achieved. This overwhelming sense of injustice at the end of the novel is exacerbated by Paula Marshall and Briony receiving no punishment. The only sense that the criminal has been punished for their actions, comes from learning Briony has developed dementia. She is now losing her memory, a tool that is vital to do what she loves – writing.