The Wars is a 1977 novel by Timothy Findley telling the story of a young Canadian officer in World War I. First published by Clarke Irwin, it won the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1977.
Plot overview
The novel follows the experiences of Robert Ross, an officer in the Canadian army who is 19 when World War I breaks out, and is narrated by a historian who is researching and understanding Ross' life, in particular a controversial wartime incident he instigated. The story is told through the memories of the few living people who knew him, and the historian's reconstructions based on archive materials. It portrays the life of an Edwardian higher class family in Canada's 20th century, and warfare on the Influences and style
Robert Ross, the protagonist, was inspired by T. E. Lawrence and the author's uncle, Thomas Irving Findley, to whom the novel is dedicated. Findley named the character after Canadian literary figure Robbie Ross. Robert Ross' sister, Rowena, was inspired by Mary Macdonald, daughter of Sir John A. Macdonald.
The Wars utilizes first-, second-, and third-person narrative, which is very rare in literature. The novel is also an example of historiographic metafiction.
Plot Summary
Part One
The beginning of the first chapter is actually an allusion to part 5. Robert Ross has enlisted in the army. His sister, Rowena, who suffered from hydrocephalus and used a wheelchair, has recently died from a fall. Robert feels guilty for her death, and joins the army to forget about her.
His girlfriend, meanwhile, leaves him because he will not beat up a man who he has never seen.
He meets Eugene Taffler, a war hero, while searching for two stray mustangs on the prairie. He later discovers Taffler having strange intercourse at the whore house.
While on the ship to England, Ross had to kill a horse that broke its leg.
Part Two
Robert is now in France and in charge of a convoy, he has become lost in the fog and separated from his men. He falls into a muddy sinkhole and nearly drowns. He is saved by Poole and Levitt, two of his men. Robert eventually reaches the dugout with Levitt. Devlin, Bonnycastle, and Rodwell were there. Rodwell cares for injured animals he finds and has birds, rabbits, toads, and hedgehogs. The rabbits remind Robert painfully of Rowena, because she loved to play with her own rabbits back at home. Robert builds a bond with Rodwell, and begins to love him. Rodwell is the only other civil soldier who cares and respects for animals.
Part Three
Robert is now experiencing trench warfare at its worst. Following a shelling of the dugout, his fellow soldier Levitt loses his mind, and Robert finds himself close to the brink. Ordered to place guns in a location sure to be a deathtrap, Robert and his men find themselves on the wrong end of a gas attack. Robert is the only one with a gas mask, so he saves the men by telling them to urinate on clothes and hold them over their faces. One man is scared to urinate and Robert must do it for him. After pretending to be dead for hours, Robert finds that they are being watched by an enemy soldier. Rather than shooting the soldiers, the German allows all of Robert's men to leave the area. Just as Robert is leaving, however, the German makes a quick motion, resulting in Robert killing the man. Robert thinks that the German was reaching for his rifle when he was actually reaching for a pair of binoculars to look at the bird flying overhead. He is then haunted by the sound of the bird from then on.
Part Four
Robert receives an invitation to Barbara d'Orsey's home. The majority of this section is told through transcripts via Juliet d'Orsey. Juliet relays through diary entries the building relationship between Robert and her sister, Barbara. She also tells of Eugene Taffler's attempted suicide. Juliet accidentally sees Barbara and Robert Ross make love prior to leaving. By the end of the chapter, Juliet gives Robert a candle and a box of matches.
Part Five
Robert leaves Barbara d'Orsey's home and heads back to battle on a small train. Shortly after reaching the bath house, he is brutally raped by an unknown number of his fellow soldiers. When he returns to his room, he finally receives his lost pack, and burns his picture of Rowena contained therein.
Robert then moves back out to the front. While under attack, he releases the corral full of horses so that they might live, in doing so he disobeys a direct order from an officer so Captain Leather tries to kill him for treason. Robert gets to his gun first and plants a bullet between Captain Leathers' eyes. He runs away with the horses as he knows he will be court-martialed for disobeying orders. He is a fugitive for some time before finally being caught in a barn with the horses. The soldiers surrounding Robert set the barn on fire, and Robert is badly burned. Although he lives for a while afterward, he never recovers from his wounds and dies before he can return to Canada.
Characters
Robert Ross
A second lieutenant in the Canadian field artillery from 1916-1917 (he enlisted when he was nineteen). He is a compassionate, handsome fellow who suffers the loss of his sister, Rowena, who died from a fall onto cement ground in the barn. This caused Robert great guilt for his sister's death. From this point, Robert has violent streaks and leads an internal war with himself while also trying to cope with the war going on in the world. After Rowena's death, Robert became distant from his mother and much closer to his father, who continued to support and encourage him throughout his experience in the war. Robert's personality is serious, practical, determined, and observant of things that other people cannot see. His observations also allow him to react quickly to the situations he encounters in this novel. Even though Robert is determined, he was not a natural killer; this weakness was seen in his inability to kill the injured horse or Rowena's rabbits. Robert strived to learn from Eugene Taffler, who Robert hoped could help teach him to kill by example. After all the terrible things Robert witnesses, he gradually descends into madness, and reveals his true essence: "not yet", when Marian Turner, the nurse who takes care of him asks whether to help him die or not.
Rowena Ross
Rowena is Robert's older sister, who acted as his guardian when he was a younger child. She was hydrocephalic, meaning she was born with water in the brain. This caused her to have an adult sized head but a body of a ten-year-old, and could not walk. She was 25 years old when she fell and died from her complications, and remained to stay in Robert's life throughout the rest of the novel. Rowena also took care of ten rabbits, all of which were killed against Robert's wishes shortly after her own death, at the command of their mother.
Thomas Ross
Commonly referred to as Mr. Ross in the novel, who is the father of Robert Ross. He was the more lenient parent in the family and loved every member enough to encourage Robert to go for what he wants, but be lenient towards Rowena's death and the accusations that were made. The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Ross became helpless after Rowena's death and Robert's enlisting in the army. It was only after Robert's death when Mr. Ross actually seemed to help.
Mrs. Ross
Mrs. Ross is Robert's mother who has issues with closeness to people that she truly loves. Later on it is revealed in the novel that her brother died in a completely random horse drawn carriage accident and ever since then she realized how hopeless it was to keep people alive. This way of being "distant" from the ones she loves is displayed early on in the novel when she joins Robert in the bathroom during his bath. She tells him that "people in the world are all born alone and at the hands of strangers" and tells him that she could do nothing to keep him alive from the moment he was cut away from her. This statement makes it seem as though she doesn't care about Robert going off to the army because she can't keep him alive anyways. But in the end it is ironic in how although she was always "distant" from him, while he experiences the perils of War overseas, she would go out in the rain, wind, and storm to experience the types of conditions he was experiencing. This truly displays the way that their mother/son bond is always existent and no matter what she says can never be broken. Even in the beginning when she tells Robert to kill Rowena's rabbits after her death, this seemingly cruel order is really her way of attempting to prepare Robert for War when he will have to kill without thinking. Later on when Robert is labeled as "location unknown" by the army, Mrs. Ross goes blind almost as though without her son in the world there is nothing left to see.
Marian Turner
This lady is an 80-year-old nurse in World War I who had the only other first-hand account of Robert besides Lady Juliet. She remembered Robert vividly and wished that she could have taken away his pain.
Lady Juliet d'Orsey
Juliet d'Orsey gives an account of Robert, whom she knew at the age of twelve and for whom she had romantic feelings. She is Barbara d'Orsey's younger sister who saw too much and acted too maturely for her age. Interestingly, she seems to be the only character who understands
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