An Essey about R.Graves "The Shout"

The most popular of Robert Graves' short stories “The Shout” hangs somewhere between mythical thriller of the mind and coded message with almost prophetic meaning. It is said that “the stories reflect aspects of his personal experience in a significantly modified form” [2].
“The Shout” was written by R. Graves “not sooner than his period of professorship in Egypt” and the Egyptian “feeling” or influence is sensible through the main action area – the sandy hills. The concrete reason for the author to write “The Shout” is unclear, but it is said that “the couple in the story is loosely based on himself and his wife Nancy, but no known incident in his life until its writing seems to fit. There is a later incident however, which does seem to reflect aspects of the story : the breaking up of Schuyler Jackson's marriage by Laura Riding” [2]. R. Graves himself states that the inspiration for “The Shout” he gained “one day while I was walking in the desert near Heliopolis in Egypt and came upon a stony stretch where I stopped to pick up a few mis-shapen pebbles; what virtue in them I do not know, but I somehow had the story from them”[2] elsewhere the author has said : “Pure fiction is beyond my imaginative range: I fetched back the main elements of “The Shout” from a cricket-match at Littlemore Asylum, Oxford,” [2] and so it is clear that the short story has clean base in the real world, even though some parts of “The Shout” is highly imaginative. …