Literature Analysis #1

Literature Analysis #1

The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford

                The Good Soldier is by no means a straight forward book, and it also has no true discernible plot.  The events and chapters in the story are not written in chronological order, leaving it up to the reader to piece together when certain events happened and what led up to them.   However I am able to construct a general idea of the story and its events.

The story follows a nameless narrator through his adult life as he retells the tales of two people whom he was close to, you could say his best friends, the Ashburnham’s , Edward and Lenora.  The narrator tells of his life with his wife, Florence, a woman he believes to have simple joys and wants, cursed with a weak heart, for as long as he knows her they never engage in sexual relations, even though they are married, because all of the doctors he asks tell him “It will be too hard on her heart.” But he enjoys his life with her, taking care of her, they travel all over Europe but spend most of their time at a spa town by the name of Nauheim.  Together they witnessed the trials and tribulations of the Ashburnham’s, Edward, a Captain in the British Military who enjoys simple passion and is somewhat of a romantic, having dreams similar to the stories of old where the hero whisks the maiden off her feet and off to some far away fairy tale land.  He gambles and drinks and dances simple because it is expected of him to do so with his class.

But his life would be like a night on a stormy sea, an endless night of torturous winds and massive waves.

It is revealed that the Edward and Lenora’s marriage is one of convenience rather than love, and Edward often takes mistresses throughout the story, he is seeking his true soul mate, someone that will listen. And for a good time all is well, until the day the treachery of Florence is discovered.

The narrator discovers everything he knows of Florence to be a lie, while he has been faithful she has had affairs with multiple men, including Captain Edward Ashburnham, a man by the name of Tom that once rented a loft in their home and several men of Noble class they met through their journeys of Europe.

Upon the narrators discovery Florence commits suicide and that is when the Saddest Story truly begins, Edward falls to depression and seeks a new flame, he finds it in the arms of a Spanish Dancer, wed to an Archduke, however for a hefty fee she shares a bed with him and listens to his woes, when she tires of him she cuts off all dealings and leaves him alone in a city foreign to him, his body drained of passion and love, he takes to drink and gambling where he gambles away his families fortune, his wife Lenora is forced to step in and take care of finances and sadly this is how his affairs continue, till his heart can no longer take the loss and he dies in his bed, after a lifetime of pain and loveless affairs, he never found his soul mate, and was not once faithful to his dear wife Lenora, who never took another man.

                The story is written, as I said before, in a non-chronological order, it is a style called “unreliable narrator” where for some reason what the narrator says cannot be taken as fully truthful or correct. In fact in the beginning of the book the author states that “I cannot assure you that everything in this will be true to as what really happened, but it is what I perceive to be the true events that took place.” He openly admits his words cannot be taken at face value.

Not several pages later he asks “I would implore you to listen to me beside this hearth…” implying that the reader is in fact a nameless friend to him whom he is regaling with the story of the Ashburnham’s, the story he calls, The Saddest Story.

I did a little research and discovered the original name of the book was actually “The Saddest Story” but was changed to “The Good Soldier” after the onset of World War I to promote patriotism in Britain.

The style of writing stays constant throughout the book, however as Edward sinks deeper into a pit of sadness and loneliness we can see a noticeable change in diction by the write, as he uses less light and happy wording and moves toward using heavy, more depressing words.

                The author’s style is something I have not seen before and it was one of the things that kept me reading the book once I got started.  One of the things I enjoyed was that the tone of the story didn’t change with the views of the characters begin affected by the events but was only changed by the narrators point of view on the situation.  So at times when the reader expects a sad tone, perhaps a mourn tone, such as when Florence dies, we get a tone of indifference.

                One point of interest for me was the conflicted feelings of the writer, he would often state an opinion before openly contradicting himself with another, such as when speaking of Florence after her death he says “She was a wretch, she took me around Europe and refused me happiness, and I only gave her joy.” To in the next few sentences say “I suppose I still loved her, despite her deceptions, I love her with all my heart.”

                The writer was also not one for physical description, only giving light direct description he enjoyed using nature when describing actions or feelings and sometimes alluding to other objects, such as his description of Florence “She was like a small flower sitting in her study alone, her scent was something of a summer breeze lightly billowing past my nose, and when I touched her I found her to be made of silk.” And he describes the Spanish Dancer Edward pays to share a bed with him as “A rare creature rarely seen, delicate, yet ferocious she hunted Edward down in a time of weakness and a predator stalks its prey, her cheeks holding a setting sun and her body swaying as tree branches in a soft breeze.”