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Early Life
Robbie Turner, is the son of Grace Turner and Ernest Turner. When he was young, his father walked out and so his mother sought work as a housekeeper for the Tallis family, alongside fortune telling in order to make a living. She and her son live in a cottage at the end of the family estate. During his time spent back at university he took up work as the Tallis family groundskeeper where in the film, he is introduced to us putting on gardening gloves and work boots. (reference film)

Robbie Turner is introduced to the audience in the novel and the  film as having just returned from Cambridge University having received a fist-class honors, yet it is unknown to us what he studied. Due to his social class, his education was payed for by his mum's employer, Jack Tallis who will also be funding his further studies by returning to Cambridge University to study medicine in hopes of becoming a doctor.

During his spare time, Robbie has a typewriter in his bedroom where he spends time writing, and also educating himself for preparation for university. This also where the letter were written which landed in the unfortunate hands of Briony Tallis, the sister of the intended receiver but also his lover, Cecilia Tallis. He also has a passion for music, as in the film he plays  La Bohememe on his record player.

War
In 1935, Robbie was falsely accused and arrested for the rape of Lola Quincey, the first cousin of Briony and Cecilia Tallis, who were staying with the family. He was sentenced and sent to prison where he served time before in 1940 he was released to join the British Expeditionary Force fighting in France at the outbreak of World war 2. He was only given two options "stay in prison or join the army" (direct quote from the film)

Although he is only a private with no officer rank, Robbie's ability to read maps and speak French earn him respect with the senior figures. This includes the two Corporals he meets, Mace and Nettle, while trekking across the French countryside. Corporal Nettle stays with Robbie until just before the evacuation of Dunkirk, where sadly Robbie does not make it home. Robbie Turner dies from septicemia as the injury on his chest becomes infected, although it is never known to us how he got that injury to begin with.

The Novel
Robbie Turner is a character from the novel Atonement,which was released in 2001 Ian McEwan a renowned English author and screenplay write. The novel won two awards, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2002, and  Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in the same year. Further, Time magazine announced the novel as the best fiction book of 2002.

Key Quotations
"It was Robbie, wasn't it?"
 * "Growing up…godamnit! You’re eighteen. How much growing up do you need to do? There are soldiers dying in the field at eighteen. Old enough to be left to die on the roads. Did you know that?"
 * "He thought of himself in 1962, at fifty, when he would be old, but not quite old enough to be useless, and of the weathered, knowing doctor he would be by then, with the secret stories, the tragedies and successes stacked behind him.
 * Everything connected. It was her own discovery. It was her story, the one that was writing itself around her.

Adaptations
The novel was adapted into a movie in 2007, which was directed by Joe Wright and written by Christopher Hampton. The cast consists of A list stars such as Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan. In 2008, Atonement was nominated for 7 Oscars Awards, where they won 1 for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score. The following year, 'Atonement' won 2 BAFTA's for 'Best film' and 'Best production design'.

Critical Readings
Many critics argue that although Robbie was from lower-class, he never showed any attributes or went with the stereotypes of the lower classes, of that day, for example being poorly educated and poor linguistics. It was the Tallis' who allowed him to break free from the constraint of his lower class, more specifically Jack Tallis who funded all of Robbie's education, Robbie in the novel is referred to as Jack's "hobby". It is highlighted in one critical article that 'although Robbie comes from a working-class family, he had the education and thus, status of an upper-class family. This enabled him to breach the class system in Atonement. Max Weber writes about the fluidity of class: “Tran-sitions from one class status to another vary greatly in fluidity and in the ease with which an individual can enter the class. Hence the unity of ‘social’ classes is highly relative and variable.” (Weber 1947:425). However, although he may be seen with the attributes of someone from a higher class, it is evidently his class that stops the Tallis' from believing him when he is accused of the rape of Lola, and therefore highlighting that he will always be seen as a lower class to everyone else.

Biblography

 * Atonement, dir. Joe Wright (Universal Studios,2007)
 * Atonement. List of Awards. IMDB, https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0783233/?ref_=m_tttr_tt
 * Reinhold Gobel Maria Callas singt "Si, mi chiamano mimi" La Bohème (Puccini) -- Tullio Serafin, online video recording, YouTube, 2 January 2014, 
 * Ian McEwan, Atonement (Vintage classics, London, England,2001) chapter 1 Page 13, 27-28, Chapter 1 Page 44, Chapter 3 405-415
 * Shmoop Editorial Team. "Robbie Turner Timeline in Atonement." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 19 Feb. 2022.
 * Talevski, V. “Class and Social Inequality in Ian Mcewan’s Atonement”. Journal of Contemporary Philology, Vol. 3, no. 1, June 2020, pp. 157