The Wars Timothy Findley Analysis

r has been a relentless part of mankind’s history that has incredibly influenced the lives of people around the world. These effects, however, are extremely harmful. From the battle of David and Goliath to the Trojan War, people have been struggling to vanquish their rivals. These contentions are just as daunting as the battle we confront within ourselves. Images of blood and death appear when one thinks about war, but the aspect of what war does to a person psychologically is sheltered by these outer pigments. Although war depends on these images of conflict, The Wars – an award-winning novel by Timothy Findley shows the mental aspects of the war on both the soldiers who encounter extraordinary weight on the battlefield and their families.

Findley shows how war can adversely affect a man’s deportment through his characters. Robert Ross, the protagonist of the novel The Wars, indicates manifestations of a mental health condition that is known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As the novel progresses, Robert is faced with many challenges, which in the essence, transforms him from who he once was to a soldier loaded with madness. “His temper, you know, was terrible. Once when he though he was alone and unobserved I saw him firing his gun in the woods at a young tree… Other times he would throw things down and break them on the ground… he had a great deal of violence inside and sometimes it emerged this way with a gesture and other times it showed in his expression when you found him sitting alone on the terrace or staring out a window” (Findley, 152-153), writes Findley. The war is significantly affecting Robert; his exposure to violence is leaving him in an undeniably delicate state. His conduct can be deciphered as being progressively fierce and can show his decreasing

Today, suicide among soldiers is a growing problem. According to the Hartford Courant, soldiers who committed suicide were encountering serious psychological problems during deployment. In the novel The Wars, Timothy Findley suggests that some soldiers may be driven to suicide by their experiences in the war. One such character is Rodwell. Like Rodwell, these soldiers endured extreme mental anxiety and developed psychological problems that ultimately prompted to suicide. Rodwell has outrageous love for animals and he keeps them in his company even on the battlefield. On the opposite side of the spectrum, he was eventually sent to the front lines and was compelled to watch the killing of a cat by his fellow soldiers. Findley wrote, “Half an hour later, Rodwell wandered into No Man’s Land and put a bullet through his ears” (Findley 135). Rodwell was extremely traumatized by this horrendous event and could not overcome it mentally. Similarly, Captain Taffler who had lost both his arms in the war and was conveyed to England for treatment attempted to perpetrate suicide by “rubbing his wounds to make them bleed. The stumps where his arms had been were raw and one of them was pumping blood in spurts across the floor” (Findley 152). Captain Taffler resorted to suicide so that he could escape from his excruciating existence. Findley utilizes his characters to demonstrate how the impacts of war drove these men into