The Shoe-Horn Sonata: Act Two, Scene Eleven Summary & Analysis

In their next interview with Rick, Bridie and Sheila explain that their choir “disband[ed]” in April of 1945 because too many of the singers had died, including Miss Dryburgh. As such, both women felt depressed and hopeless, but Sheila decided to arrange sonatas, which are “piece[s] for two musical instruments.” In this way, Sheila and Bridie continued singing, bringing music to the camp so that everyone “would know there was still music left.” “It probably sounded bloody awful,” Bridie says. “But not to us. To us we still had harmony… and the Japs could never ever take that away.”

Sheila tells Rick that she returned to the camp 30 years after the war. Although she’d spent so much time “trying to forget” what had happened, she wanted to find the cemetery where they’d buried all of their friends. Tragically, though, there were no headstones, so the bodies lie in unmarked graves. “Why did you go back?” Rick asks, and Sheila says, “Because I’d never really left.”