Modern novels themselves
push the limits of form. In Robbe-grilllet's novel, as well
as in Ford Maddox Ford's the Good Soldier, closure in the
conventional sense has been displaced. The novel's end, like
a labyrinth, simply draws us back to its beginning without
confirming, negating, or resolving any of the tensions,
questions, or hypotheses we may bring to our reading of the
narrative...
We expect to learn about the most
important events in the story through the narrative. But in
Robbe Grillet's narrative, we discover that the soldier is
wounded without having learned just how or when this
happened...20