Chapter 5: Key Events
English Lit: AQA A Level Atonement - Specification B, topic 2.5.1
Key Event in Chapter 5: Lola & Marshall's Dynamic
Briony abandons the play rehearsal, leaving the twins and Lola bored and restless. We learn that the Quincey parents are divorcing. Paul Marshal enters and, at the end of the chapter, gives Lola a chocolate Amo bar.
Marshall meets the Quinceys
- Paul Marshall introduces himself to the Quinceys.
- Marshall is typically insensitive, upsetting the Quincey twins with his careless admission that he has read about their parents in the press.
Lola's scolding & confusion
- Lola to Marshall: “Then I’ll thank you not to talk about them in front of the children” (p59).
- Lola takes on the role of parent or adult in scolding Marshall, mimicking what she expects her parents would say.
- But we learn that this is just a front which masks her feelings of uncertainty and confusion: “her heart was beating painfully hard… she did not understand…”.
Lola's innocence
- Lola, still an adolescent, is easily manipulated by Marshall’s compliment, “You’ve jolly good taste in clothes”.
- Even as she tries to impress Marshall with her maturity in recounting how she went to the London Palladium to see Hamlet, she betrays her innocence when describing how she spilled a “strawberry drink” on her “frock”.
- Lola is vulnerable, caught between childhood and adulthood.
Key Event in Chapter 5: The Amo Bar
Paul Marshall gives Lola one of his chocolate Amo bars. The chocolate bar initiates an unsettling moment of intimacy between Marshall and Lola.
Quotation: Amo chocolate bar
- “Paul Marshall sat back in the armchair, watching her closely… He crossed and uncrossed his legs. Then he took a deep breath. “Bite it”, he said softly. “You’ve got to bite it”” (p62).
Marshall's pleasure
- Marshall’s evident pleasure in watching Lola try the chocolate bar is uncomfortable, particularly with Marshall’s focus on the sensual.
- The atmosphere is not quite right (even the twins recognise “that no adult had business with sweets”) and it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that Marshall is using the chocolate to lure or ‘groom’ Lola.
Marshall's comment & tension
- Readers will still have Marshall’s curious comment of Lola reminding him of his favourite sister fresh in their memory and also of the narrator’s account of Marshall waking “uncomfortably aroused” after a dream involving “his young sisters”.
- The tension increases at the end of the chapter as Lola, laughing, calls on the twins to leave. She will be alone with Marshall.
Test yourself on Chapter 5: Key Events
What compliment does Marshall pay Lola?
What do the twins say of Marshall in Chapter 5?
How does Marshall wake after dreaming of his “his young sisters”?