A GUEST + A HOST = A GHOST. DRAMAS OF HOSPITALITY IN REBECCA WEST’S THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER

First published in 1918, Rebecca West’s debut novel The Return of the Soldier focuses on a common trope Great War Literature: traumas war and difficulties returning veterans to fit back with everyday life. story shell-shocked soldier Chris Baldry, who suddenly finds himself world which has aged 15 years beyond his memory, may be read as unfolding multi-layered drama hospitality, host-guest continuum is constantly renegotiated. Chris’s memory erasure does not only turn him into foreigner recognize wife or remember dead son, but also forces family members question role they have been playing His equilibrium shattered becomes stranger him, while long-lost love, working-class woman well below social standards, become more important than anyone else. An analysis modernist techniques stylistic features will allow me address concept hospitality relation trauma disease. paper show that critique war, multi-perspective narrative precariousness relationships. It argued “question-of-the-foreigner”, Derrida addressed seminal essay Of Hospitality (2003) acquires new meanings when disease transforms loved one an “other” whom communication seems interrupted. thus regarded unstable concept, identity alterity are