An important recurring image in the novel is that of  the face on the steps of Waterloo Station in London, which precipitates Wolf's emotion collapse in front of his history class, and loss of his job.
The face of "a man regarded by Wolf as an epitome of the kind of suffering which challenges belief in a benevolent creator".
In a letter to his brother Llewelyn, written from Chicago on 18 February 1925, in which Powys mentions working on Wolf Solent, he refers to a beggar that he had seen with "a 'shocking' face".
Professor Peter Easingwood suggests that from this encounter came the idea for the face which forms such a "dominant pattern of symbolic imagery" in the novel.
This face "of inert despair" is seen by Wolf as linked to "the appalling misery of so many of his fellow Londoners".

Morine Krissdottir in her biography of Powys, Descent of Memory, dates the action of the novel as taking place between March 1921 and May 1922, just three years after the end of World War I and notes that a "triumphal Victory Arch" was formally opened as the main entrance to Waterloo Station in London on 21 March 1922, to be a memorial to the dead.
She also records that "in an ironic twist, the steps [of the Victory Arch] soon became a place where beggars, many of them mentally and physically crippled ex-sevicemen gathered".
Furthermore, she also suggests that while there is no direct reference to the war in Wolf Solent "the metaphors and imagery" do in fact allude to it, and that "[t]he novel is in fact about a world after the great war--a world in which everything is irrevocably changed".
An important recurring image in the novel is that of  the face on the steps of Waterloo Station in London, which precipitates Wolf's emotion collapse in front of his history class, and loss of his job. The face of "a man regarded by Wolf as an epitome of the kind of suffering which challenges belief in a benevolent creator". In a letter to his brother Llewelyn, written from Chicago on 18 February 1925, in which Powys mentions working on Wolf Solent, he refers to a beggar that he had seen with "a 'shocking' face". Professor Peter Easingwood suggests that from this encounter came the idea for the face which forms such a "dominant pattern of symbolic imagery" in the novel. This face "of inert despair" is seen by Wolf as linked to "the appalling misery of so many of his fellow Londoners".
Morine Krissdottir in her biography of Powys, Descent of Memory, dates the action of the novel as taking place between March 1921 and May 1922, just three years after the end of World War I and notes that a "triumphal Victory Arch" was formally opened as the main entrance to Waterloo Station in London on 21 March 1922, to be a memorial to the dead. She also records that "in an ironic twist, the steps [of the Victory Arch] soon became a place where beggars, many of them mentally and physically crippled ex-sevicemen gathered". Furthermore, she also suggests that while there is no direct reference to the war in Wolf Solent "the metaphors and imagery" do in fact allude to it, and that "[t]he novel is in fact about a world after the great war--a world in which everything is irrevocably changed".
Wolf Solent