Critical Analysis of “The Good Soldier” Essay Example

if the passionate,
the headstrong, and the too truthful are condemned Samuel Hynes, 'The Epistemology of The Good Soldier', The Good Soldier, Norton Critical Edition (1995. W.W. Norton & Company), p. 315.

Nancy's love must regress, as the etiquette of society must prosper. Fatally for those who were unable to conform to "the technicalities of English life" due to burgeoning eroticisms, "the end was plainly manifest." Ford creates imagery of umbra and shadow elsewhere in the novel: "inevitably they pass away as the shadows across sundials." Ford's adumbrations of unillumination may also reflect the restrictions of human knowledge. Darkness reflects the tenuousness of human cognition. Dowell proposes earlier: what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities?
It is all darkness.

Samuel Hynes agrees by stating: "we recognize an irresolvable pluralism of truths, in a world that remains essentially dark."  Further images of nebulousness are resonant when Nancy had "three weeks for introspection" beneath gloomy skies, in that old house, rendered darker by the fact that it lay in a hollow crowned by fir trees with their black shadows.

The allusion purports to the restrictions of society encapsulating Nancy, and others, bounding them from their intimate desires. Convention is "a prison full of screaming hysterics." Thus, shadow and darkness totemize convention and flame and fire express passion and desire. Immediately Ford alliterates "the flames still fluttered." Nancy's passion prevails while "introspection" about desire and love pervades her. Nancy considered marriage as a "sacrament" and the burning logs once represented an "indestructible mode of life." Now the world Nancy is absorbed in becomes embroiled in doubt and uncertainty. Ford exploits repetition

in: "love was a flame," and "a man who was burning with inward flame" to reiterate fire signifying Passion.

The tone shifts after the passage, passion is extinguished by "the whole collections of rules:" "the fire had sunk to nothing...a mere glow amongst white ashes." Eros has imminently subserved to convention. 'The Epistemology of The Good Soldier', p. 315 The tone of the passage is melancholic, morose and formidable. Ford formulates a mood of passion in retrogression like the "fading day." Time seems unyielding, passing tentatively and laboriously, reminiscent in "The long afternoon wore on" and "lolloped." The ambience of fatalism is encircling all in Bramshaw Teleragh. They are without control over their predestined existence as Ford reiterates in the latter: "Not one of us has got what we really wanted." Everything passionate and picturesque is proscripted to contraction as society imprisons them. Nancy has gained comprehension which amounts to her vexation and Leonora is realising she will never procure Edward's love, thus a lachrymose and deranged mood blankets the household.

"The little cottage piano that was in the corner of the hall" resonates concupiscent desires. Ford constructs this elsewhere in the novel using an analogy of their "little four-square coterie" and "stepping a minuet." Dowell questions the consistency of human nature and agonises over why honest and pure beings are prevented from flourishing. "Isn't there any Nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments...?" The "silly old tune" is Eros, candour and Nancy's purity endeavouring to survive while preordained by society to degeneration.

The dialogue represents a juxtaposition of protagonists. Themes of antipathy and contraposition are conveyed through characterization. Nancy is unadulterated, chastised, innocent and nave: "If

I married anyone I should want him to be like Edward." Leonora agonises over this: "Leonora writhed on her couch and called out: 'Oh God'" The two characters are collated as "Passion and Convention". Leonora is decorous and sustains the ideology of "good people" and "the law of the Church" but she is also described as being "cold." Nancy's uncontrollable desire is to fulfil her passions for a man whom she is forbidden. Ford resonates irony in the positioning of both figures, the chastised is doomed to failure and the "cold" is destined to prosper. The two characters present contrasted worldly views of the bourgeois ethic encompassing them. Both characters seek cognisance of society and other human souls.

We are reminded of Dowell's narration when he postulates his narrative may be inadequate: "It is so difficult to keep all these people going." He then continues to set out the events in "diary form." Dowell "knows nothing until it is written down."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Hynes, Samuel, 'The Epistemology of The Good Soldier,' The Good Soldier Norton Critical Edition, (1995 W.W. Norton & Company), p. 311-317.
2. McCarthy, A. Patrick, 'In search of Lost Time: Chronology and Narration in The Good Soldier,' English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, (1997 Greensboro NC), 40(2): 144 & 312.
3. Meixner, A. John, 'Ford's Literary Technique,' The Good Soldier, Norton Critical Edition, (1995 W.W. Norton ; Company), p.257.
4. Nigro, G. Frank, 'Who Framed The Good Soldier? Dowell's Story in Search of Form,' Studies in The Novel, Winter 1992, (Winter Dexton TX)
   24(4): 382-385.