Blog Post #4 - Atonement

“They hated him and he deserved everything that was coming his way. He was answerable for the Luftwaffe’s freedom of the skies, for every Stuka attack, every dead friend. His slight frame contained every cause of an army’s defeat...But it was impossible to do nothing. Joining in would be better than nothing.” (McEwan 237).


While at the bar, defeated from the travel to the beach in Dunkirk, Robbie and his friends enter an abandoned bar in hopes for a drink, but enter in the midst of a violent mob attacking a single man. They blamed the man in the Royal Air Force for not protecting their soldiers well enough from the German air fire that struck many of their men. To avoid conflict with the other soldiers, Robbie’s friend Mace saves the man by disguising his sympathy for disgust, shouting that he will throw the RAF man in the sea, but in reality, he lets him escape. This whole conflict highlights the importance of perspective and putting oneself in another’s shoes. Of course, Robbie, Mace, and Nettle were equally frustrated as the other men, since all of them had to dodge the bombs on their strenuous travel to Dunkirk. The RAF was partially to blame, but that one man in the bar acted as their scapegoat. Taking out every emotion, they beat the man up with no mercy. The single man was obviously not the one solely responsible for all their dead comrades and their treacherous travels, but his uniform represented the air force as a whole. Robbie, Mace, and Nettle’s character shone through as they felt a responsibility to somehow save this man. They understood that he was just a man merely taking orders from a hierarchy, just as they were. Robbie Turner and his friends had the ability to take their emotions and frustrations out of the picture and put themselves in a different perspective. The man in the RAF did not kill any of their friends, it was the Luftwaffe, but the mob of men failed to recognize that. This passage also highlights the mob mentality and how dangerous it can become.