an impression forced itself upon me of being on the scene of some unexpiated crime
If I’d meant my little courier run as another crumb of expiation, I’d failed. If I’d meant my service here on the island as a larger penance, that, too, had fallen short.
had shot demonstrators, and had spent the night gathered in their barracks in a long session of self-recrimination. Now its men confronted their captain, Lashkevitch, and declared expiatory mutiny. They would not, they told him, shoot again
it gave him an opportunity to expiate his guilt
remained behind to expiate the country's collective guilt
what he curses in his mission is this expiation of expiation itself
Hamlet (who else)
The sole expiation I can make is to beg your forgiveness
his passionate and expiatory nature
quoting Edmund Wilson
if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates
quoting from the end of Critique of Violence