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A* Atonement Exemplar Essay 3
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'Paul Marshall is the real criminal of Atonement.' To what extent do you agree with this view?
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Atonement: Practice Essay 1'Paul Marshall is the real criminal of Atonement'
To what extent do you agree with this view?
Plan
1. YES; Marshall is the only man who committed the crime, and by extension his
crime made all other crimes (Lola, Briony) possible, allowing Robbie to take the
blame is also despicable, he shows no remorse in that way
2. NO; Briony possessed the motive before Paul's crime due to McEwan's one
moment at the fountain, repetition of 'maniac', she has the 'passion for secrets'
and 'love of order' which makes a crime inevitable according to determinist
ideology, she was culpable according to the law and thinks she is guilty
3. NO; but Briony atoned for her crime, does remorse over an entire life make a
crime forgivable
4. NO; the other adults are the guilty people, Emily and Leon for letting Briony go
through with her testimony, and the police in being ineffectual
5. NO; Lola is equally guilty given her later decision to marry Paul, like Lolita she
helped bring about the crime by being sexually precocious
6. YES; theme of absent parents common in all of McEwan's works excuses Lola
and Briony's crimes, Paul is the only criminal with no real excuse, especially
given his privileged and distinguished lifestyle
7. Conclusion: the only real crime in a literary sense is Briony's crime against the
reader with the post-modern choice ending, but according to the law Paul is the
only guilty person and as such he spends his entire life trying to cover up his
crime, while Briony does the opposite
Response
Arguably, it is somewhat ironic that Atonement centres on the questionable
transgression of Briony as a child rather than the supposed rape and assault committed
by Paul Marshall, for which there can be no excusing his culpability given his lack of
remorse and subsequent passivity in allowing Robbie to endure 'eternal damnation'.
Nevertheless, we must consider Lola's similarly despicable passivity as a flawed victim,
the ineffectual nature of the police force and the Tallis family, in addition to Briony's
culpable age according to the law and her own conviction that she has committed a
terrible crime against Robbie.
It seems undeniable that Paul Marshall was solely responsible for his assault of
Lola, and for the false incrimination of Robbie. After all, his sexually perverse thoughts,
demonstrated by McEwan's use of the adjective 'aroused' after a dream sequence about
Marshall's 'young sisters', are comparable to that of Humbert Humbert in Lolita and
suggest a considerable degree of pre-meditation in his character, which only serves to
accentuate the repugnance of his crime. We are also led to presume that Marshall
'scratched' Lola's 'face' prior to the dinner scene, and the arrogance here in leaving
marks on Lola for all to see implies that he believes that he is above suspicion - at the
crime scene, he calmly skirts around the clearing before disappearing, and this
arrogance adds to his position as an inexcusable criminal. This collected passivity
foreshadows his later ability to remain ignorant of Robbie's suffering throughout his
entire life, so he is in that respect an unrepentant and re-offending criminal who
ironically becomes a revered 'Lord' with the great wealth required to own a 'black rolls',
for example. McEwan creates profound social commentary here by suggesting that the
justice system and the police force are, in reality, completely ineffectual, and that social
mobility is unable to restrict the movement of criminals. One could go as far to argue
that, without Paul's crime, all other crimes would never have occurred. It is true that if
Lola was never assaulted, Briony would not have had the opportunity to offer the false
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