Sequels and phobias in The Return of the Soldier of Rebecca West :: Rebecca West

Times of war and pause Sequels and phobias in The retort of the Soldier of Rebecca atomic number 74.Rebecca western United States (1892-1983) was a prolific source who tried every literary genrejournalism, literary critique, the short tarradiddle and the impertinent. Her first novel The Return ofthe Soldier published in 1918 spans half(a) a century of creative exposeput culminated in 1966with her last novel The Birds happen Down. However, all her narrative is easily identifiablebecause of her unmistakable style, the building of her novels, the topics she chooses andthe coherence of her ideas about mankind and society. Subsequently, all her novels arepsychological, historical and affable documents depicting human behavior in a precisehistorical and social context. West synthesizes what she observes rooting her ideas inBritish literary tradition. Her lament critical eye is both penetrating and enlightening, forrepresentative, when in The Return of the Soldier, Margaret co lor appears poorly dresseddaring to invade the Baldry mansion with her mud cover boots, while Jenny, thenarrator, expresses crude feelings of resentment towards Margaret and her social group.The latter is represented ... as the rich hate the poor, as insect things that will struggleout of the crannies which are their decent home, and introduce ugliness to the light ofday (West, 1918, rpt.1984 32)1.Wests literary reputation was revived in the 1980s with the decomposition ofYugoslavia. Her Black Lamb and Grey Falcon A Journey by means of Yugoslavia (1941)brought her wide critical attention because this novel was the last of her efforts tounderstand the pre-war situation. Furthermore, it was cardinal to Wests next book, TheMeaning of Treason (1947), where she concentrated on the psychological characteristicsof traitors and she wondered what caused these people to do what they didfor West,war fosters deception and betrayal. The final example of Wests interest in treason is hernovel T he Birds Fall Down (1966) which concludes with the deaths of both the traitorand the friend he betrayed and in The Return of the Soldier, a study of the sequels of warin human mind, the protagonist is betrayed by his family. In the aforementioned novel,West employs what at the time was an original device, blackout from war trauma orshell shock as surface as an unusual perspective on warthat of those who waited athome. West tries to explore the reactions of three women to a returning soldier who,though married, remembers provided an earlier love for another woman.In spite of its obvious literary quality, The Return of the Soldier proved to be anovel seriously punished by critics.