Pages 202-213: Key Themes

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Perspective & Time in Pages 202-213: The Night in the Barn

For most of this section, we continue to view events from Robbie’s perspective.

Robbie is “exhausted, but not sleepy” and, although his “wound throbbed uncomfortably” (p202) he cannot take his mind off of the victims of war he has passed that day.

The metaphor of a hand “squeezing” his throat is used twice in the chapter to describe the oppressive, suffocating regimes of prison and army life.
His thoughts soon turn to Cecilia and, in the excerpts from her letters to Robbie, we hear directly from her perspective. Cecilia was not allowed to visit him in prison as the authorities feared this would over-stimulate Robbie who they had diagnosed as “morbidly over-sexed” (p.204) and so they instead wrote to each other every week.

Cecilia provides Robbie with a reason to survive the war.
He carries his last letter from her in his pocket and, as Robbie reads it once more, we again see events directly from Cecilia’s perspective.
The closing words of the letter, “I’ll wait for you. Come back” (p203) become a mantra of hope for Robbie.

Robbie’s reflections take us back in time. He recalls the three and a half years he spent in prison and then describes his meeting with Cecilia in a café in the Strand in London.
We learn about his anxiety about meeting her, their kiss by the bus stop and his regret at not accompanying her to the hospital where Cecilia works on the maternity ward

Families torn apart and romantic love are key themes in pages 202-213.

Cecilia has broken off from the Tallis family. We learn that she “had not spoken to her parents, brother or sister since November 1935 when Robbie was sentenced”.
When Leon visits her in hospital, we learn that Cecilia “pushed past” him and “wrenched” her arm free, the verbs suggesting an almost violent separation from her family.
Robbie, who has undergone a forced separation from his mother, is “troubled” by the thought that “she was destroying a part of herself for his sake”.

There are other references to families torn apart in this section:
- The Bonnet sons describe how the loss of their older brother had such a damaging effect on their mother.
- Robbie cannot get the family of the boy in pyjamas out of his head.
- Cecilia’s letter tells Robbie that one of the premature twins she has been looking after on the maternity ward has died.

Cecilia and Robbie’s relationship provides the only positive representation of romantic love in the novel, albeit in very challenging circumstances, with the prison sentence and then the outbreak of war keeping them apart.
Cecilia’s letters provide Robbie with a “reason for life” and the words “I love you. I’ll wait for you. Come back. Cee” become a mantra of “hope” for him.
We learn that, even amidst the horrors of war, Robbie “would lose himself in thoughts of her” (p211).

The sexual aspect of romantic love is impossible because of the enforced separation between Robbie and Cecilia.
But the reference in one of Cecilia’s letters to her visiting the library, finding a quiet corner and pretending to read (p205) may be a coded reference to masturbation, as Cecilia is presumably mentioning the spot where she and Robbie made love.