51 pages • 1 hour read
Timothy FindleyThe Wars
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Robert Ross
Robert Ross is the protagonist. He begins the novel a young man, barely past his 19th birthday. Despite his young age, he experiences extreme horror and suffering. He leaves behind a privileged life in Canada and finds himself immersed in the barbarity of the First World War. He watches people suffer and die. Robert himself is compelled to murder innocent people. Robert experiences the reality of war on every level, from the horrible sinking mud to officers’ stupidity to animals suffering. Gradually, his faith in the military as an institution (and humanity as a whole) fades away. He abandons his childhood notions of heroes and patriots, eventually throwing off the shackles of the military and rebelling against the absurdity and horror he sees around him. For this, he is punished. Robert ends his life scarred and broken, a used-up product of the First World War and all of its attendant terrors.
Robert is introduced to the audience at his nadir. The opening prologue sets the scene of an officer who has found himself in an impossible circumstance. Though the audience is not yet familiar with the context of the scene, Robert is introduced by his “torn lapels” and “burned sleeves” (13), surrounded by burning military infrastructure. He saves the horses and the dog as best he can. To the audience, this is a desperate and heroic act. But Robert is clearly in disarray and hurt. He is hardly able to grip his own pistol and seems to have no direction or objective. The audience does not yet know that he has just shot an officer or that he is about to lead the horses into a barn which will be set on fire. The author inserts these into the text via the subjective memories collected later. It serves as a reminder of one of the central themes of the novel: the importance of perspective and the impossibility of a single objective truth. When the scene is repeated later in the novel, all of Robert’s actions have additional subtext. His desire to save the animals stems from his relationship with Rodwell and his desire to preserve purity as represented by animals. The image of Robert riding the horse with the dog alongside him is an echo of his time with Rowena. Even the pistol, a gift from his father, carries additional meaning. The Robert who is introduced in the prologue is not the same man who appears in the same scene later in the text.
Robert’s family in Canada is far removed from the brutality of the battlefields. The picturesque natural scenes of the Canadian countryside are filled with animals, plants, and scenery: a picaresque of reality. The family has money, and on the surface seem happy. The author reveals underlying darkness: Robert’s mother is an alcoholic and she manipulates her children emotionally. Robert’s sister, Rowena, is confined to a wheelchair. Robert, like his father, has difficulty in expressing his emotions and maintains a distance from his loved ones that seems unreconcilable. When Rowena dies, this subtext becomes clearer. Robert’s mother orders him to kill his sister’s rabbits, and after he is beaten trying to protect the rabbits she intrudes on Robert while he is bathing. Roberts concludes that family life in Canada—as pleasant as it seems—is a captive personal hell. The personal hell of Robert’s home life becomes a neat juxtaposition for societal hell of life on the frontlines.
The First World War changes Robert. Every day, he feels his humanity slipping away. He sees his friends die, he sees officers make terrible decisions, and he kills a German soldier whose kindness had allowed Robert and his men to escape certain death. Men just like him rape Robert in the baths. He comes to the realization that war robs people of their innocence and humanity, and he loses the desire to fight or any understanding of what he is fighting for. Instead, he decides to save the horses. The horses are part of the natural world: animals which have suffered immensely for the sins of man. They are innocents in Robert’s eyes and thus the only lives worth saving. In killing his commanding officer and trying to escape with the horses, Robert is trying to re-affirm his own humanity. This is an act of compassion, an attempt to help innocents which reflects his childhood with Rowena. Earlier in the text, “[Robert] learned to run” (17) for Rowena; in the climactic scene, t Robert rebels against the institutions confining him to save equally helpless horses. He is aware that he will be punished for this and gladly accepts his fate. Even when he is captured, his last conscious thought is for the dog’s safety. Robert suffers immensely for his heroics. Burns from which he will never recover cover his body. Though his body is broken, Robert has gone a long way to saving his soul. He has recaptured elements of what made him human prior to war. Robert’s rejection of war becomes his salvation.
Rowena Ross
Rowena Ross is one of the most important figures in her brother’s life. Rowena’s innocence comes to define Robert’s personal world view; she is the figure against which he judges all others, and usually finds them wanting. Though she is sickly throughout her short life, she demonstrates more humanity than anyone else Robert meets. As such, she becomes a martyr: an impossible to replicate figure whose purity and innocence is juxtaposed against everything Robert sees while in Europe.
Despite this, Rowena as a character is not particularly well defined—something can only be unmarred if regarded at a distance. She appears only briefly in the book, glimpsed through the childhood photographs of her and Robert together. He acts as her protection, providing her with access to activities that her health would not otherwise have permitted. He rides horses with her and builds a series of rabbit hutches set at the exact height of her wheelchair. While most of the family seem to pity Rowena and to expect her to die at any moment, Robert is the only person who is invested in helping her to live. They are close as a result and it is her memory which he carries with him to the battlefield. Because of the very little time the novel spends with Rowena, the depth of her character is somewhat shallow. Rather than possessing an arc of her own, her early death solidifies what she represents. Throughout the novel, Rowena becomes a byword for innocence and purity. Her death means that she never has the opportunity to be corrupted (like Robert) or to harm the family in any manner (like Mrs. Ross). She also does not live long enough to see the world descend into the chaos of war and thus remains untouched by the barbarism of the First World War.
In this respect, Rowena is less of a character and more of a symbol. If she represents innocence and purity, then it is her memory that Robert carries with him to the battlefield and against which he compares the people he meets. No one can measure up to Rowena, but few people even come close. Rodwell is the only comparable character, in that both share a love for animals, both die young, and both of their deaths affect Robert deeply. But the memory of Rowena is taken across the Atlantic to Europe, serving as a constant reminder to Robert that the horrors that surround him are unnecessary.
The culmination of this arrives in the aftermath of Robert’s rape. When he returns to his hotel room, he finds the photo of Rowena buried in his recently-returned kit bag. After Poole leaves, he burns the photo. To Robert, this is “not an act of anger—but an act of charity” (160). He cannot tolerate the existence of such a pure image in such a barbaric world. He burns the photo so that even the memory of Rowena will not witness him in such a broken state. Rowena’s purity cannot co-exist with the barbaric world which Robert has discovered. Thus, he burns her photo and exorcises his memory, finally coming to terms with the true nature of humanity.
Juliet d’Orsey
While Juliet’s sister Barbara plays a more pivotal role in the life of Robert Ross, it is her sister Juliet d’Orsey who has a greater influence on the novel as a whole. The portions of the text in which she offers her recollections are included as (supposedly) verbatim transcripts of conversations between the audience and Juliet herself. This imbues these chapters with a unique perspective, both in terms of the narrative mode and the character herself. Juliet reads from her diaries, seeing the world from the point of view of a twelve-year-old. In a novel dominated by adults and their terrible deeds, this child’s perspective adds a new dimension to the novel and helps add depth and perspective to Robert’s life.
Even though these events are viewed from a child’s perspective, Juliet is introduced to the novel as an old woman. Her memories are “the most vivid and personal we have” (92) of Robert and she is the only living member of her family, so is the only person left who can provide a first-hand account of life at the d’Orsey’s convalescent hospital where Robert spent a significant amount of his life. This gives Juliet a dual role: she has the childlike perspective provided by her diaries and the more informed, retrospective viewpoint of an elderly person reviewing the events of their life. In a novel so characterized by the importance of subjectivity and perspective, Juliet is unique in that she can provide two distinct perspectives on the same events, both of which help the audience to better understand the life of Robert Ross.
To that extent, Juliet is less an active participant in Robert’s life and more an observer. Her childhood recollections position her as a present but unacknowledged perspective; too old to be considered a child in need of assistance, too young to be considered one of the adults. This allows her to enter places without fear of retribution and burst into rooms without worrying who is inside. In one such instance, she witnesses Robert and Barbara engaged in (what she perceives to be) a violent sexual situation. She does not have the frame of reference with which to process this scene and, as a consequence, it affects her deeply. In many ways, her experience is an echo of Robert, who viewed Taffler engaged in a similar situation through the peephole in the brothel wall. Robert, just like Juliet, was unable to come to terms with what he had seen.
The similarities between Robert and Juliet are further ratified at the end of the novel. After Robert’s experience in the burning barn, he is sent to the d’Orsey home to recover. There, Barbara ignores him, and he is severely injured. The love with Juliet once held for Robert returns and she becomes his companion. She becomes to Robert what Robert was once to Rowena. She cares for him when he is sickly and helps him to live. It is fitting, then, that she provides many of the most important and most insightful memories of Robert. Of all the characters, Juliet is the only one who can truly understand Robert’s formative and most important years.
