Analysis Of Special Timothy Findley's The Wars

Throughout history authors have been known to include didactic content into their novels that either use literary conventions to target the readers, forcing them to be more attentive while reading, or the use of characters in the story to portray ideas, as well as; major historical events that would assist the reader’s understanding of what is being said in the text. Albert Einstein is a famous scientist and one of his best known theories is the “Theory of Relativity”, according to Britannica’s relativity article “Special relativity is limited to objects that are moving at constant speed in a straight line, which is called inertial motion. Beginning with the behaviour of light (and all other electromagnetic radiation), the theory of special

Findley further explains that an individuals’ “truth” depends on location and time and their own personal experiences, where they are in time and space affects how their perception of things. One of Timothy Findley’s greatest pieces of literature is the novel The Wars. The story of The Wars follows the journey of a young male by the name of Robert Ross and his experiences before, during and after World War One. Throughout the novel, Findley draws attention to certain things that seem ambiguous or might have a deeper “truth” than one may automatically assume by using phrases such as “pay attention”, or even the sentence structure changing dramatically. Deconstruction was developed by Jacques Derrida in the 1960s; it can be used to produce readings that emphasize ambiguities and contradictions. When it comes to deconstructing the numerous “truths” that reside within a piece of literature, being knowledgeable of how perception varies throughout individuals can be

The generalization of love is often correlated with sex and/or sexual attractiveness; this is depicted throughout the media and their heavy sexual messages. Findley uses characters to show how a virgin mind tries to grasp the concepts of “love” and “sex”, “but what he saw so confused him that he stood there of his own volition – desperately trying to comprehend. There were actually two naked people…whoever it was who was there was standing in the middle of the floor hitting whoever else was there – striking out with all their force” (Findley, 39). Robert Ross in this situation has a hard time understanding the concept of “making love”, and is confused as to how the act of sex is a form of love in any way, he viewed it to be very physical and more like a battle than an act of love. Findley further supports this initial innocence or virgin mind of Robert when he says, “He’d never even dreamed of such a thing – of being hit and wanting to be hit. Beaten. Or of striking someone else because they’d asked you to” (Findley, 39). This theme of violent sex unfortunately comes up once again later on in the text when Robert is raped, “All he could feel was the shape of the man who entered him and the terrible strength of the force with which it was