ipl-logo

Loss Of Innocence In The Wars By Timothy Findley

850 Words4 Pages

Beginning early in life, people establish different values and beliefs through personal experience, leading them to commit to preserving certain ethics and ideals. These commitments serve as the cornerstone of one’s identity and heavily influence the life decisions one makes. In Timothy Findley’s The Wars, the protagonist, Robert Ross has a clear commitment to preserving the purity of life and innocence. Thrown into the hectic environment of World War 1, Robert struggles against all odds to preserve the integrity of his own humanity. Using The Wars, we can determine that perseverance in the commitment to upholding one’s beliefs and values can guide them through even the most stressful environments. Robert’s sister, Rowena, is a girl bound to her wheelchair due to being born with …show more content…

To Robert, she is a symbol of the purity and innocence that fuels his belief in humanity. After the unexpected death of Rowena, Robert locks himself away, blaming himself for his failure to protect her, as he was “her guardian”. Seeking refuge from the shame and guilt he bestows upon himself, he enlists himself in the army. From the beginning of the story, Robert is established as a man with a strong connection to animals. They are used as a persistent reminder of Rowena and all that she embodied. Robert relates more to animals than his fellow soldiers, as animals do not judge him for his decisions. The recurring motif of innocence is played throughout the story as a foil against the cruelties perpetrated in war.
As Robert experiences the horrors and inhumane atrocities of war, he realizes that his intrinsic values do not fit well in the terrorizing warzone. He struggles to hold onto the humanity so many of the soldiers around him have abandoned. This is especially evidenced when

Show More
Related

After The War Began By Jill Lepore Summary

714 Words | 3 Pages

Jill Lepore used quotes and images from English colonists and portraits to show how colonists wrote about their experiences during King Philip’s War and how the narrative of the war has changed throughout the centuries. It also sets how colonists will narrate wars for future centuries. She spoked about how their writings of the war had a consequence of temporally silencing the Native Americans version on the war and how people have forgotten or even have any knowledge of the war. She uses a Boston merchant, Nathaniel Saltonstall account tilted “A true but brief account of our losses since this cruel and mischievous war begun” written in July 1676 year after the war had begun. He lists towns such as Narragansett, Warwick, Seekonk and Springfield

Read More

Loss Of Innocence In Fallen Angels By Walter Dean Myers

567 Words | 3 Pages

The novel Fallen Angels, written by Walter Dean Myers, is a story that follows a young African American man named Richie through his journey in the Vietnam war. As a child, Myers had a hard time communicating with others as a result of his speech impediment, and looked to writing as an escape. Similar to the main character, he joined the army as a teenager. This novel was inspired by his own experiences in the army, and served as an outlet for him to express all of the things that he learned about war. The main theme of Fallen Angels is the loss of innocence that war brings.

Read More

Truth And Illusion In The Wars By Timothy Findley

249 Words | 1 Pages

It is sometimes difficult for individuals to settle the discrepancy between truth and illusion, and consequently they drive others away, by shutting down. Mrs. Ross, in The Wars by Timothy Findley, is seen as brittle while she is attending church, and cannot deal with the cruel reality of the war and therefore segregates herself from the truth by blacking it out. As a result, she loses her eyesight, and never gets to solve the clash between her awareness of reality and the actuality of the world. She hides behind a veil, and her glasses to distance herself from reality. Mrs. Davenport has to wheel her around in Rowena’s chair to keep her awake, so she doesn’t harbour up subconscious feeling within her dreams, which she is unable to deal with.

Read More

The Soldier In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

990 Words | 4 Pages

The lives of soldiers, Norman Bowker and Curt Lemon, illustrate how the war pressures the human spirit to a standard it can’t resemble. The pressure and responsibilities of lost friends and lost acts of courage heavily weigh Norman Bowker down,

Read More

Stylistic Analysis Of The Wars By Timothy Findley

650 Words | 3 Pages

The Psychoanalytic study of the human mind invented by Sigmund Freud revealed "the complex structuring of unconscious material and to demonstrate the psychic action of repression"( Gay 2006, pp. 64–71). Just as the study of the mind is intended to explain and generalize human behavior by our actions and inability to perform such actions, Timothy Findley 's Robert Ross is seen as a paradigm of these actions and inactions. Timothy FIndley 's Governor general 's award winning for English-language fiction; "The Wars" a book written in 1977, follows a 19-year-old Canadian boy named Robert Ross, enlists in the Recruitment for World war 1 battalion after the death of his younger sister Rowena to escape his guilt and the societal norm, he could not live up to.

Read More

Resilience In Timothy Findley's 'The Wars'

1832 Words | 8 Pages

When Robert was forced to kill a horse with its leg broken on the boat, “He fired. A chair fell over in his mind. He closed his eyes and opened them” (60). After being forced to shoot the horse with the broken leg, the image of falling haunts Robert where Findley

Read More

Psychoanalysis Of The Wars By Timothy Findley

3223 Words | 13 Pages

Robert Ross’s journey throughout the novel leaves him unable to recognize his reflection, expecting to see the image of a god, he sees the image of a scarecrow. Findley writes, “He’d thought he would stand and see himself like a god in the glass—and there he was: a scarecrow” (Findley169). Findley portrays Robert’s moment of blindness as a connection to the changes he undergoes throughout the novel. Robert at this point in unable to recognize himself as the young boy he started off as or the hero he wanted to become. Instead, the war strips his character and left him feeling as if he has no connection to who he used to be, truthfully, he isn’t and in this scene Robert understands this.

Read More

Analysis Of Timothy Findley's The Wars

1413 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout The Wars, Timothy Findley utilizes multiple points of view to emphasize that the concepts of the war and Robert’s character were both hard to grasp. Findley’s narrative techniques show that the war manipulated and affected those involved in different ways. Moreover, the novel challenges its readers to dissect who Robert Ross was through their own judgements. Most notably, this was done through the unbiased presentation of photographs and the archivist’s research, which focused on exhibiting details about the Ross family. Also, the account of Lady Juliet d’Orsey provided a perspective that developed the reader’s overall understanding of Robert and the effects of the war away from the battlefield.

Read More

The One-Sided War Against Children By Alfie Kohn

269 Words | 2 Pages

Alfie Kohn in an excerpt from his book, “The One-Sided War against Children”, explores the topic of helicopter parenting. In which through Kohn uses ethos in order to convey his overall message, that helicopter parenting is not necessarily a bad thing for children. As there is no substantial facts that otherwise prove that helicopter parenting is damaging to children. In which Kohn uses his vast information about other articles and sources on the same topic. For example, when Kohn lists some of them, “...‘How to Land Your Kid in Therapy’...

Read More

War In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

774 Words | 4 Pages

War has a profound and lasting impact on individuals and society. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, he tells different stories of before, during and after war and how it affects the soldiers, mentally and physically. In these stories Tim O’Brien illustrates these traumas and the long-lasting effects and impact that the war will always have on these men. Even though all the men didn’t survive the ones that did continue to have traumatic flashbacks. War has a lasting impact on individuals and society, affecting not only the physical but the mental and emotional well-being of those involved.

Read More

All Quiet On The Western Front Effects Of War Essay

1064 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the ages, wars have wreaked havoc and caused great destruction that lead to the loss of millions of lives. However, wars also have an immensely destructive effect on the individual soldier. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, one is able to see exactly to what extent soldiers suffered during World War 1 as well as the effect that war had on them. In this essay I will explain the effect that war has on young soldiers by referring to the loss of innocence of young soldiers, the disillusionment of the soldiers and the debasement of soldiers to animalistic men. Many soldiers entered World War 1 as innocent young boys, but as they experienced the full effect of the war they consequently lost their innocence.

Read More

The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner Essay

635 Words | 3 Pages

Being raised a Calvinist and led to believe his was one of the elect, Robert’s actions hold almost no meaning for himself because he will be “saved” regardless. This lack of empathy and morality led to a destructive nature and deterioration of his mind. From his upbringing, he was never taught to be strong of will nor firmly rooted in ethics and morality. Instead, he was told that his no matter what he did, he had a place in salvation. This thriving of weakness and lack of control breeds a wildly uncontrolled man who, troubled by his past, must conjure the character of Gil-Martin so that his guilt can be shifted onto another.

Read More

Ignorance And Preconceptions In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

448 Words | 2 Pages

From the beginning of the novel the narrator shows ignorance and prejudice towards Robert, he is fighting with his own of jealousy and insecurity. Being unhappy with his own life, the narrator sees Robert as a possible threat to his usual evening with pot and TV, without realizing that in order to be satisfied he should step out of his habitual

Read More

Analysis Of The Wars By Timothy Findley

1906 Words | 8 Pages

The Wars is a symbolic masterpiece that illustrates the great impact war brings on the microcosm of society and how individuals juxtaposed to the war are affected. The novel itself requires active reading; because without it, the novel would seem very simplistic; however, after further examination, readers can evidently recognize the complexity of Robert’s character with the aid of many heteroglossic components, techniques, devices, and the reworking of literary conventions. Robert’s physical, mental and emotional journey he endeavours, followed by the constant re-evaluations of his truths and becoming a more proficient soldier, can be seen through a formalist perspective with the use of foreshadowing to signify Robert’s transition from a sane to insane soldier; the utilization of animal imagery highlighting Robert’s development through the horrific experiences of war; and the several themes in the text to illustrate Robert’s evolution as a soldier through his inner

Read More

Stereotypes In Raymond Carver's Cathedral

1094 Words | 5 Pages

The narrator expected Robert to have a big seeing-eye dog that will make a mess. What he did expect, was for Robert to break the shell of the typical blind man stereotype. When the narrator first saw Robert he stated, “But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind,” (5). That was the first point that made Robert begin to seem like a “normal” person.

Read More

More about Loss Of Innocence In The Wars By Timothy Findley

Related Topics

Open Document