 Pividori argues that West doesn't believe that the soldier must relive the trauma to reconcile it within himself as Freud argues.In West's assessment of the situation, the soldier's desire to survive leads him to a search for love and life so that he may communicate the atrocities which he has witnessed.Pinkerton argues that the end of "The Return of the Soldier" points to Margaret as a character and individual who is extremely adept in analysing and in tune with Chris and that the actual event is plausible within current psychoanalytic theory.