The Good Solider Essay

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In the expansive list of Modernist literature there are many well-known works that have become much loved works in society. “The Good Solider” by Ford Madox Ford being one of these most notable works. First published in 1915 by The Bodley Head, “The Good Solider” is a pre-war period work and considered a pre-modernist novel, being written shortly before the period of high modernism that took place after the First World War, making one of the first radical and deliberate breaks from traditional Victorian novel forms. As a developer of the modernist advance, Ford challenged traditional literary forms, social structures and moral codes with “The Good Soldier”, a novel he considered to be his "best book of a pre-war period." Broaching subjects …show more content…

If I had had the courage and virility and possibly also the physique of Edward Ashburnham I should, I fancy, have done much what he did. He seems to me like a large elder brother who took me out on several excursions and did many dashing things whilst I just watched him robbing the orchards, from a distance. And, you see, I am just as much of a sentimentalist as he was . . .”

Yet such a comparison between the two men is ludicrous and almost of wishful thinking on Dowell’s part. Whilst Dowell is a passive and emasculated character, whilst Edward is the archetype for the passionate, sexually assertive dominant alpha male. Edward is virile and courageous. Dowell's life is passionless; he cares for women who are not even aware of his existence. Thus, Dowell's conclusion that he and Edward are "just the same" is clearly unreliable.
However it may be argued that Fords remarkable use of the unreliable narrator is an intricate writing device designed to have the reader themselves take different opinions on the tale. It is obvious that Dowell and his opinions are skewed somewhat, so his view that “The villains – for obviously Edward and the girl [Nancy] were villains” cannot be trusted. The reader must then decide for themselves who was the villain in this story – if there was one at

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