"One could drown in irrelevance" (34).

An important passage in Atonement, where Briony contemplates just what it means to be Briony and if other people are just as alive as she is, is a realization that, if she had followed it out, probably would have prevented her from committing her crime. The scene begins with an unhappy Briony alone in the nursery, "She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she has sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it" (33).

In contemplating this, Briony also begins to think about yet another mystery, "Was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she just as valuable to herself as Briony was? Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? ...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. One could drown in irrelevance" (34).

This passage is an example of a typical childhood experience - one that is essential to growing-up: the realization that one is not the center of the universe, rather there are others with thoughts and feelings and dreams and experiences that are completely different from one's own. Most everyone has had some sort of experience like the scene in this novel. It is a realization that is essential in growing up, one that finally shatters our innocence and causes us to think of others and to be aware of their (just as important) thoughts and aspirations. It is also the striking realization that one is not as important to others in the grand scheme of things, as one is to one's self. This realization, though necessary, is incredibly disheartening. As Briony says, "One could drown in irrelevance" (34).

While Briony does contemplate these mysteries prior to her crime of misunderstanding, she does so in a rather offhanded way - acknowledging that perhaps this is possible, but not entirely ready to admit that it is certainly so. As she goes on to say, "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" (34). If she had fully acknowledged this realization, it is very likely that she would have viewed all the incidents of the day in a very different mindset, possibly leading to a very different outcome.