The Return of the Soldier centers on what would be one of the major preoccupations of writers in the first half of the twentieth-century: the effect of the First World War on man and society. Through the character of Christopher Ellis, who has amnesia as a result of shell-shock, West examines the war's disordering of a seemingly ordered society. Chris's wife, Kitty, represents the order of prewar Edwardian England, an order destroyed by the war in the guise of Chris's illness.
Thus the war disrupts the previously established class system in England, and readers see Kitty's emphasis on social position (the Ellises have landed wealth) throughout the novel. She views Chris's illness as an unbalancing of her (and their) social position. It becomes necessary for Chris to recover his memory, Kitty thinks, because for him.....
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