Eng102 32255
Professor Beecham
28 October 2017
Atonement
Social class has been important in every culture to determine the roles that people are allowed to take. The social status of a person often decides what opportunities some people have the to take. Robbie Turner is a low-class person living in the house of a family with very high social status. Although Robbie Turner is a lower class man, he is noble in his ability to use his intelligence and social skills to make the most of things when the odds are against him.
With Robbie’s mom being a maid, it wasn’t likely that he would be able to become educated but because of his intelligence and respectability Jack Tallis payed for Robbie to attend medical school. Robbie Turner …show more content…
Cecilia and Robbie liked each other romantically but due to the different social status of both of them, they were destined to be apart forever. The reason Cecilia and Robbie could never be together was because Robbie who is of a lower social status was accused of raping Lola by Briony (Cecilia’s despicable younger sister). This is done on page 156 when it says “Briony said it again, this time without the trace of a question. It was a statement of fact. “It was Robbie”.”(McEwan 156), with that statement everyone believed that Robbie did this and not the real perpetrator because Robbie’s social status compared to the successful businessman Paul Marshall was way lower. This leads to Robbie being imprisoned for a few years until he was released in 1940 to fight in the …show more content…
On that note Robbie told Cecilia his feeling for her on accident. This is portrayed in the book when Robbie says “I put the wrong one in the envelope.” (McEwan, 124). Here Robbie was saying that he put the letter with his true feelings in the envelope rather than the other version. Robbie and Cecilia then later in the book end up doing sexual activities together because of his letter to Cecilia this happened in the library but were caught by Briony. While in prison he stays in contact with Cecilia through letters that they would write to each other. Cecilia stuck with Robbie through everything, the accusations of rape and all she knew he was innocent and she wanted everyone else to believe he was too.
Upon release from prison Robbie was faced with the new problem of adapting to a battlefield. Robbie was not a warrior or fighting man, even when accused of the rape he didn’t lash out in rage. This was a playing field not meant for a man with his head in books. Robbie’s enlistment forced him into situations where he had to use the best of his skills to his advantage. Though it may not at first seem like a place for a man who once went to med school, Robbie took his mental skills along with him to try and make himself a great