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The Good Soldier Essay, Research Paper

Narrative Style of Ford; Impressionist With Many Meanings

Ford Madox Ford s narrative of The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion engages you as a silent but active listener and reveals details about people acting as themselves. The Good Soldier, unlike what the title suggests, is not a novel about war or an allegory about the defects of society traced back to the defects of human nature. Rather, it is a novel that depicts the defects of the human character and questions the worth of civilization through the first person narration of Ford s main character, John Dowell. In short, The Good Soldier questions, how men can find a workable relationship between their instincts and civilized life. Ford s writing is personable, which makes him a storyteller rather than a character of the book. He gives details one at a time and jumps in many directions, much like a story told to you. By using this form of narration, Ford leaves a lasting impression or series of impressions were traditional linear line narration fall short. Through the mind of Dowell, Ford Madox Ford s creates a narrative with an impressionist structure that enables him to construct queer and shifty notions of human relationships, an illusion of reality that grants motives to behavior that might otherwise appear obscure and penetrate into the symbolic meaning of the human heart.

Ford considered The Good Soldier as one of his best novels and piece of writing because of its structure and narrative style. He felt that The Good Soldier was the best example of what he could do with writing and his sense of what a novel should contain. Sondra Stang tells us about Ford, The good Soldier, as its readers know from Ford s dedicatory letter to Stella put everything he knew about the art of the novel into one book, it would be the book that would represent him more honorably and accurately than anything he had ever done. However, The Good Soldier has become the subject of controversy concerning the ambiguity of John Dowell. Often times, readers believe that the values of Ford are portrayed through Dowell s character. The problem becomes trying to discover if this notion is true. Ford does not directly tell us or leave any clues if he reflects his own self through Dowell. While, it has been argued that Dowell s lack of sex with Florence portrays a time when Ford was having relationship troubles, the argument by itself is simply too inconclusive.

Wanting us to form our own opinion, Ford constructs Dowell with many different character traits. On one hand we see Dowell as a man incapable of passion . . . who suffered from the sluggish insanity of defective love to a narrator who fits the [Conrad-Ford] ideal better than Conrad s Marlow, being even less of idiosyncratic observer. Dowell s character is by no means an easy character to predict or derive a certain criteria for because of the many levels Dowell is presented.

The fictional character that emerges from an impressionist writing reveals different truths about their personality that might be otherwise constricted by conventional writing. As in Flaubert, the author would be important, impersonal, hidden. Narratives would be broken into fragments of remembered events, and such shards of meanings, set side by side, would produce an additional impact, often of irony, always of psychological suspense, upon the reader. An impressionist uses the mind of only one character to tell the story. The thoughts, actions, opinions and arguments are all constructed from a single individuals viewpoint. In the case of The Good Soldier, Dowell plays this role to show the many discrepancies that exist between him and the other characters around him. While at first, The Good Soldier seems like a simple and easily narrative style to read into, there are many problems that are associated with its construction, like Dowell s constant questioning, his many levels of characterization and it chronology.

John Dowel, functions on more than one level. He functions as a husband, a friend, character of passion, shame and as a narrator. He presents his hardships and complicated nature through the rendering of his story. He tells his story not in chronological order, but as a series of impressions, as they are remembered and realized in his mind. Dowell s creative storytelling engages us to take a more proactive role and realize that he is simply talking through his story. He often switches back and forth from one time period to another, while sometimes giving more detail than before. The intent of the narrator is to reconstruct for the reader the current experience after it has been depicted and examined from prior knowledge. For example Dowel, tells us directly,

I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be help it. I have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it comes. And, when on discusses an affair A long affair one goes back, on goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. I console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person telling a story would tell them. The will then seems most real.

Ford was conscience that he was creating Dowell in this manner. If he had made Dowell a narrator who could word for word, chronologically tell his story, he would not be a believable character. He would not draw sympathy nor would he receive praise. His actions would not seem as serious; nor would his despair, grief or happiness take on as great of an importance. Ford comments, Thus an

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