Overview of Paul Marshall

English Lit: AQA A Level Atonement - Specification B, topic 6.5.1

Overview of Paul Marshall in Atonement

Paul Marshall arrives at the Tallis household as Leon’s guest.

Marshall belongs to a powerful family who have made their wealth through manufacturing. He is about to make his own fortune through the chocolate Amo bar he is beginning to market.

Marshall is the novel's villain, although he remains a shadowy figure throughout. McEwan only briefly allows us to see events from his perspective and, as a result, we are forced to rely on the at times “unreliable” perspectives of others in order to make our own judgements of him.
When we see him from Cecilia’s perspective, Marshall is a rather ridiculous figure. We are invited to laugh at the “pubic hair growing from his ears”.

However, McEwan doesn't create much sympathy for Marshall: instead, he is presented as an arrogant and insensitive bore.
Marshall dominates the conversation, launching into “a ten-minute monologue” (p49), and speaks with a condescending tone on “resentful” grammar-school types who begrudge him his wealth. Readers are likely to agree with Cecilia that, after all of the anticipation of his arrival with Leon, Paul Marshall is “unfathomably stupid”.

But Marshall is also presented as a rather sinister character.
The first hint of this is in the final sentence of Chapter 4 where Marshall perhaps (again, McEwan creates ambiguity) brushes Cecilia on the arm as she passes.
In the following chapter, events are briefly focalized through Marshall's perspective. During that time, we see him wake from a dream involving his younger sisters in a state of sexual arousal; a particularly unsettling image.