Abstract
The Good Soldier is a novel written in 1914 by Ford Madox Ford and published in March 1915. This novel is considered as the best book of pre-war period. It is also considered as a modernist work, and in fact, many modernist innovations, as well as impressionist ones, are present throughout the novel. Ford Madox Ford gave to his novel a very particular structure and texture, and consequently, it would be interesting to see to what extent the themes of the novel are present through the analysis of the structure, that is to say "the overall principle of organisation in a work" , and of the texture, which means "the surface qualities of the words in a passage, considered apart from their meaning." The narrator, Dowell, is a deceived husband who writes his story in order to understand why his life and the world in which he lives have become a real chaos. The first aspect of the novel to be studied is that this chaos is embodied by the chaotic structure Dowell gives to his narrative. The second aspect will be devoted to Dowell's quest for interpreting this chaos and for finding solutions against it through the themes of appearances, religion, and passion. The last aspect will deal with the process of writing, both for Dowell and Ford, how writing help them to meditate on human experiences and knowledge, to reproduce reality, and finally to question reality.
