What Do You Want from Me: The Usages of Hyphens and Ellipses in The Return of a Solider

Rebecca West, the author of The Return of the Solider uses throughout the book hyphens and ellipses. The first piece of dialogue in the novel have hyphens in the sentence. "Ah, don;t begin to fuss!" wailed Kitty, "If a woman began to worry in these days because her husband hasn't written to her for a fortnight-!"(3). As the reader, it is hard to even guess what to next line is going to be because we are introduced to the speaker, but not who the speaker is chastising.It can even be said, that our speaker is talking to herself. West tries to make that unclear. In the next lines we, the reader, learn the meaning of “in these days”(3). West is referring to a war as the following lines read, “‘Somewhere in France’ ”(3). Once again, the initial lines are hard to decipher because the specific name of the war is not clarified. Later in the story West writes, “he would smile secretly to us,as though he knew we would not cease in our task of refreshing him; and all that he did on the morning a year ago, when he went to the front…” (6).  In essence, West purposefully has the character give limited information. Therefore, West intentionally have the characters know more about the setting and time rather than the reader. West continues this hierarchy between the reader and the characters by including hyphens and ellipses. The ellipses imply that something has been left out because the reader should already know what should be said. The hyphens censor the reader’s ability to understand what is going on. The second piece of dialogue is censored therefore the reader remains ignorant.  West has dual expectations for her reader to both understand the content, but remain in the dark about the full story.