Throughout this semester, we discussed how various authors and thoese that experienced the horrors on the front and the impacts felt at home were expressed. We've learned that many soldiers could not or would not communicate the horrors they experienced for a number of reasons. We saw this phenomenon in All Quiet on the Western Front when Paul returns home and doesn't speak to the horrors he experienced. In his chapter "Oh What Literary War" Paul Fussell wrote, "Whatever the cause, the presumed inadequacy of language itself to convey the facts about trench warfare is one of the motifs of all who wrote about the war." (pg 185) 

While reading Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier, West expresses this exact sentiment as Jenny considers Chris' lost memory as a result of shell shock. "His very loss of memory was a triumph over the limitations of language which prevent the mass of men from making explicit statements about their spiritual relationships (pg 65)." This quote succinctly sums up what so many were experiencing during World War I.