Fragmented Impressions within the Time Continuum

        Jenny, the cousin of Chris Baldry, in Rebecca West's "The Return of the Soldier," towards the end of the novel makes an interesting statement which I think sums up nicely the theme of the novel. She says: "I knew quite well that when one is adult one must raise to one’s lips the wine of the truth, heedless that it is not sweet like milk but draws the mouth with its strength, and celebrate communion with reality, or else walk for ever queer and small like a dwarf. Thirst for this sacrament had made Chris strike away the cup of lies about life that Kitty’s white hands held to him, and turn to Margaret with his vast trustful gesture of his loss of memory" (pgs.87-88).  This quote encompasses the terms we have been discussing in class: public vs. private time, fragmentation and impressionism. Chris who has been fighting in World War I has been hurt and is now suffering from "shell shock." This in turn has caused him to regress back fifteen years prior when he was in love with a woman named Margaret Grey; however he is currently married to Kitty and has this life in a beautiful home located on beautiful land but that is not what he remembers. He has this fragmented impression of a life long ago.
           As the reader we are allowed to move through this continuum of time with Chris in private time as he goes through these fragmented scenes from his past of a life with a woman he in present reality has no connection with. His discrete moments rest in their happiness as a couple who had a firm foundation of love. His perception is affirmed when they meet and they share an almost kismet union (p.59).  The other characters are operating in the reality of public time. They are aware of marriages, births, deaths and more importantly, the war. The war which plays such a pivotal role in the context of the novel and not just as the catalyst for the story line, but as a major historical event. Women, not being privy to the combat side of the war but having to deal with the aftermath, gives a different perspective as we can recognize from the novel. Also, men having to return home after succumbing to the horrors and effects of war and then bringing that baggage to their families, can be difficult to handle as well, which is also evidently expressed throughout novel. 
           The fragmented impressions which presents this objective reality the reader experiences as they move through this time continuum allows them to get a greater sense of this private and public time as seen through Chris's eyes and the rest of the characters. Although Margaret at times seems to enjoy bathing in Chris's fragmented sense of reality because there is something real within the fragmentation between them, at the end she realizes that he has to know the truth (pg. 88). Unfortunately life operates in the present time not a distorted sense of a subjective reality.