In 'The Good Soldier' Ford uses the theme of adultery among his four main characters to examine the basis of social reality, the difference between 'normal' and 'strange', between what is 'good' and what 'evil'. His narrator gradually comes to realise that while 'normality' is useful in maintaining social cohesion, there is nevertheless an "irresolvable pluralism of truths in a world that remains essentially dark." 'The Good Soldier' has been described as the Perfect Novel, and Ford himself called it his "auk's egg", the best thing he had ever written.