Pages 191-201: Key Events
English Lit: AQA A Level Atonement - Specification B, topic 3.1.1
Key Events in Pages 191-201: To The Farmhouse
Part Two of the novel is set in northern France in May, 1940.
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.
"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.
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).
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.
Test yourself on Pages 191-201: Key Events
How is the leg that Robbie sees in the tree described on p192?
Where do Robbie and the other soldiers find food and a bed in pages 191-201?