3.1.1

Pages 191-201: Key Events

Test yourself

Key Events in Pages 191-201: To The Farmhouse

Part Two of the novel is set in northern France in May, 1940.

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Key events: 191-201

  • Robbie, now a soldier in the British army, leads two other soldiers through the war-ravaged French countryside towards the northern coast at Dunkirk where British forces await rescue back to England.
  • The three men arrive at a farmhouse where they are given food and a bed for the night.
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"Horror" of WW2

  • Through Robbie’s eyes, we are given a glimpse of the “horrors” of World War 2.
  • The opening sentence of Part Two refers to the destabilising impact of “the unexpected detail” during wartime.
  • In the next paragraph, we learn about the particular “horror” which has affected Robbie so much.
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Quotation: "leg in a tree"

  • “It was a leg in a tree. A mature plane tree, only just in leaf. The leg was twenty feet up, wedged in the first forking of the trunk, bare, severed cleanly above the knee… It was a perfect leg, pale, smooth, small enough to be a child’s…” (p192).
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Analysis of body imagery

  • The surreal image of a disembodied leg in a tree is unsettling in itself but the detached, matter-of-fact tone in which it is described suggests that the soldiers are numbed, used to seeing such atrocities.
  • The suggestion that this is a “child’s” leg seems to be the detail which means that Robbie cannot get this image out of his head.

Jump to other topics

1Introduction to Atonement

2Chapter Summaries & Analysis: Part One

3Chapter Summaries & Analysis: Part Two

4Chapter Summaries & Analysis: Part Three

5Chapter Summaries & Analysis: Part Four

5.1Epilogue: London, 1999 - Pages 353-371

6Key Character Profiles

7Key Themes

8Writing Techniques

9Context

10Critical Debates

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