The Return of the Soldier Literary Elements

Modernistic novel

1918, the end of the First World War, London

The story is of the first-person point of view; the narrator is Jenny.

The tone is sad as the main character has lost his memory, his wife is very miserable; but even with the development of the events the tone does not change, since it stays sad even when Chris has his memory back, and the reason is that now he remembers the war and his dead son Oliver.

There are four protagonists – Chris, Kitty, Jenny and Margaret – and the antagonist is the war.

The main conflict is in choice – to remind or not, and this choice stays before Margaret, it is her who is chosen to tell Chris about his son.

The climax happens in the very end when Chris is walking across the lawn looking like a soldier, which means he remembered.

The moment when Jenny receives the letter from their cousin informing that Chris has lost his memory foreshadows many trials that the characters are to go through in future.

The place of Kitty as a wife is understated, it is not stated that their marriage was unhappy, but her role is not of such effect for returning Chris’s memory.

The story alludes to the First World War

See the imagery section

The paradox is that Kitty finds it unimportant to tell Chris of their son.

“I knew that so he would close his eyes as he ran; I knew that so he would pitch on his knees when he reached safety.”

“I turned away so that I might not spy on Kitty revisiting her dead.” (“her dead” is a metonymy for Kitty’s deceased son Oliver)

“the sunlight was pouring through the tall, arched windows”
“the day lingered as a white streak above the farthest hills”