To give some context, this passage is from the short story “The Other Boat,” by E.M. Forster. The story (extremely condensed) is about two boys who meet as children, and meet again as adults through the intervention of one of them, where they proceed to have an affair that ends in one having a PTSD scare and killing the other, before killing himself.
[Passage in question](https://imgur.com/a/QJSLZSk)
My question here, for those just reading or those familiar with the story, is this supposed to signify rape? I wrote an essay about the story and some my professor’s corrections centered around the one character raping the other while in the middle of that PTSD fugue, before or after killing him. I don’t care about the grade, but I did not get that impression at all from the text, I couldn’t find any reference to it elsewhere, and I’d feel a bit bad if I missed some obvious markers of rape and ended up writing a story about tragic unhealthy love instead
The relevant parts of the passage that I didn’t pay that much mind to were the “ecstasy” from the killing (which I interpreted as just memories of the war he was a part of?) and a mention of other injuries on the body besides the strangulation that killed him and the killer being a monster for that, but reading that now it almost seems like just a reference to assumptions about previous intercourse before this scene. So, am I wrong here? Is this really obvious or an accepted reading?
Thanks!
by Known_Bass9973