The Return of the Soldier
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.5
Rebecca West
The Return of the Soldier tells the story of a shell-shocked soldier who returns home from the First World War believing that he is in love with a working-class woman from his past, rather than married to his aristocratic wife. His family and doctor must decide whether to allow him to remain safely in his delusion, or to bring him back to reality and return him to the front. A brief novel with a seemingly simple plot, it is a classic of modernist literature and provides a point of entry into discussions of some of the twentieth century’s most enduring themes. Appendices include textual variants, patriotic and antiwar verse from World War I, war journalism by West, contemporary paintings and propaganda posters, and material on shell-shock.
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Author
Rebecca West
Pages
240
Publisher
Broadview Press
Published Date
2010-09-21
ISBN
1551115123 9781551115122
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"How tremendously sad. Somewhat beautiful, but mostly sad. <br/><br/>I loved this quote because women:<br/><br/>“It has sometimes happened that painters who have kept close enough to earth to see a heavenly vision have made pictures of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin which do indeed show women who could bring God into the world by the passion of their motherhood. ‘Let there be life,’ their suspended bodies seem to cry out to the universe about them, and the very clouds under their feet change into cherubim.”<br/><br/>And of all the things that broke my heart, the one that hit the hardest was Margaret believing her son had died because she was poor: <br/><br/>“‘I thought perhaps my baby had left me because I had so little to give him. But if a baby could leave all this!’”"
K R
Kayla Randolph