Comparing Poetry And Natural Imagery In Timothy Findley's The Wars

Pablo Neruda’s poetry and Timothy Findley’s The Wars are both powerful and distinct condemnations of human-made cultural rules which frustrate and corrupt human nature. Many of Neruda’s poems speak broadly and generally about the oppressive nature of societal rules through the contrast of human-made and natural imagery. Findley’s novel, a much longer and more personal tale, highlights the grief and sorrow of the individual tragedy of the protagonist, Robert Ross, also through the contrast of mechanical and natural imagery. Their common belief that strict manmade rules are corruptive and destructive is shown through their unique uses of imagery in perspective, length, and concreteness of their imagery.
Neruda and Findley use perspective in opposite

Findley’s novel is a five part tragedy; however, its length lends itself to painting a deeply personal picture of Robert’s life. The imagery that describes the gratifying and blissful experiences Robert goes through are intricately linked with nature, as seen during his run with the coyote and the passionate scene as Robert frees the horses from the train. However, his experiences in the dugout, trenches, artillery, and other constructs of humans lead to his loss of innocence and a feeling of violation, which peaks after he is raped in the bath house. These experiences are concretely linked through imagery to artificial concepts, such as war, which corrupt his fellow soldiers to rape Robert and ultimately destroy a part of him. The length of this novel allows Findley to delicately build that connection between the natural and happiness, the human-made and corruption. Neruda’s poems, by contrast, are much shorter. The page-long to two page-long poems deliver powerful but impersonal images with which many can relate to. He also associates nature with happiness, as seen through his connection of the elements to his lover in Your Laughter and links the artificial with destruction, demonstrated through the horrific consequences of the actions of oil companies in Standard Oil Co. His shorter poems allow him to leave his readers with these connections but the

Findley hints at the freedom of nature by describing unambiguously peaceful scenes of nature such as the comfort of the woods in the prairies and the liberating feeling of running through nature. Neruda does the same when describing the strength of “fists raised above the wheat” in Song for the Mothers of Slain Militiamen and the elements of nature he associates with his lover in Your Laughter. Both authors contrast the positivity of nature with harsh imagery of the human-made: the graphic horrors of gunfire and destruction of warfare in The Wars (the drowning in the dike, the burning of the barn) and of the mechanization of the natural in Neruda’s Standard Oil Co (the ensuing wars, the rape of the land). Through concrete imagery, both authors are able to establish a stark contrast between human-made and natural, revealing the corruptive and destructive nature of the