Chapter 4: Key Themes

English Lit: AQA A Level Atonement - Specification B, topic 2.4.2

Key Thems in Chapter 4

Cecilia is focalizer. Danny Hardman and Paul Marshall are introduced in Chapter 4.

The narrative perspective switches back to Cecilia as focalizer.
We see her response to Briony’s tantrum and her own confused feelings towards Robbie. She is self-conscious at all times and, on meeting Paul Marshall, wonders if this will be a defining moment in her life in that she will end up marrying him.
The narrative voice also creates moments of comedy, particularly when it notes that Cecilia has “passed many hours deliberately not thinking of Robbie Turner”, illustrating her confused response to Robbie.

McEwan introduces two new characters in this chapter.
First is the 16-year-old Danny Hardman. Cecilia is suspicious of him (“She had noticed him hanging around the children lately. Perhaps he was interested in Lola”) and notices how his lips have become “innocently cruel”.
Cecilia’s reactions suggest something villainous about Hardman.

Paul Marshall is at times presented as a rather comic figure in this chapter.
Cecilia notices “something comically brooding about his face” and she longs to tell Leon that Marshall “had pubic hair growing from his ears”.
She finally dismisses him as “unfathomably stupid”.

McEwan may be deliberately misleading (or misdirecting) the reader here.
By using Cecilia’s perspective, he presents the readers with two possible villains, of whom Hardman seems to be the most sinister.
However, the ambiguous ending to the chapter serves as a reminder that Marshall may not be all that he seems.

Leon mentions that he has invited Robbie Turner, the son of their cleaning lady, to dinner that evening.
This sparks some comments which highlight the prejudices and assumptions around social class in English society.
Marshall speaks with an arrogant and patronising tone on “resentful” grammar-school types while Leon teases Cecilia by asking her, “You think he can’t hold a knife and fork?”

A recurring theme in the novel is the absence of parent or authority figures.
Emily Tallis, the mother, is referred to but only to explain why she is not present (“Emily’s lying down”).
It is obvious that Emily has often been missing through much of her children’s childhoods as “it was hardly necessary to say” that their mother is suffering from another migraine which they would recognise by “a certain darkening at the windows” of her room.
Likewise, Emily’s husband is “staying in town”.