Written as a complex post-modern crime text, the reader is positioned deliberately, by
McEwan, to react to Paul Marshall’s crime in a calculated way. The novel is a self-
consciously postmodern novel with a self-conscious modern narrator, often using the
technique of narrative called ‘stream of consciousness’, and recurring motifs of crime
fiction. The structure and style of the text make it harder to draw judgements about key
characters since the narrator is unreliable. In this regard Marshall is positioned as an
archetypal criminal, although his crime is marginalised. However, does this mean his actions
are any less deplorable because McEwan chooses to side-line Marshall in favour of focusing
on Briony’s crime, or does McEwan exploit Marshall as a representation of the upper class
to highlight the Marxist idea that the class system serves to reward the rich and exploit the
poor.
The reader’s initial introduction to Marshall positions him almost as a parody of a criminal.
His description is reminiscent of Fagin from ‘Oliver Twist’, where Dickens utilised the
physiognomy of the Victorian age to present Fagin as a villain. Dickens describes Fagin as an
‘old shrivelled Jew’ with a ‘villainous-looking and repulsive face’. Using Marshall as a
construct, akin to Fagin, he is depicted as a potentially guilty character by his grotesque
physiognomy which mirrors his unpleasant sexuality and predatory persona. The reader
discovers that his ‘ear hair’ was ‘comically kinked like pubic hair’, presenting him as
predacious when considered alongside his ‘uncomfortably aroused’ state after an erotic
dream about his younger sisters. The use of the verb ‘aroused’ clearly sets him us a suspect
in the context of a rape and comes to characterise his heinous crime which makes his
innocence questionable. McEwan presents the attack in graphic detail to emphasise this
iniquitous view. Lola is described as being ‘prized open and taken’. The dynamic verbs here
are deliberately grotesque and not indicative of actions we would expect of human
behaviour, thus adding an element of inhumanity to Marshall’s crime which undoubtedly
accentuates his criminality. The phrasing ‘prized open’ connotes the idea of Lola being
butchered and forcefully ‘taken’. Combined with the fact that Marshall allows Robbie to
take the blame for his crime, he is therefore the strongest advocate for the view that, as a
character, there is nothing to redeem him. It seems that McEwan positions him as wholly
evil to expose him as representative of the upper classes who exploited the working classes
during the Second World War, an issue that McEwan wanted to reinforce through this
novel.
Whilst Marshall is indeed presented as an unrepentant criminal, it could be argued that
Briony is complicit in Marshall’s crime, in that she lied to the police, the consequences of
which come to dominate the rest of the novel in the form of the protagonist’s atonement.
Her four, monosyllabic words ‘Yes, I saw him’ are sufficient to position her as a character
who is not innocent, since this lie to the police destroys Robbie’s life when she seems to
have known that he was not guilty. However, Briony’s action does not make Marshall less
guilty and it does not afford him any redemption. However, the reader does see the crime
through Briony’s eyes, which makes her account unreliable. But through Briony, the reader
is able to see the way that Marshall is positioned as grooming Lola and exploiting her
vulnerability. The reader witnesses Lola suffering as a result of the ‘bitter divorce of her
parents’ and her situation makes her more susceptible to Marshall’s grooming and charm.
Being keen to exploit her situation exposes his heinous character. He praises her saying,
‘You’ve got a jolly good taste in clothes. Those trousers suit you especially well.’ The
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