The Wars Timothy Findley Pdf
Timothy Findley was born in Toronto in 1930. His first career was in the theatre; he was a charter company member of Ontario's Stratford Shakespearean Festival in 1953, and toured several European capitals.In 1963, Findley turned to writing full-time and in 1977 his third novel, The Wars, won a Governor General's Award. 1 Findley, a novelist, playwright, essayist, and short story writer, won many awards for his work. He; 1 It would be hard to exaggerate the importance and impact of war on the life and work of Canadian author Timothy Findley (1930-2002). 1 Although he was born in well-to-do Rosedale, Toronto, the two world wars reached deeply into that safe, comfortable world to twist or destroy the lives of.
The writers of Hamlet and The Wars, William Shakespeare and Timothy Findley respectively, transform their main characters from the expected war hero or powerful prince into that of an antihero. William Shakespeare presents Hamlet as a prince bent on revenge but unwilling to do it. Timothy Findley, on the other hand, sends Robert Ross off to war in hopes that he will finally make something of himself. Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, a state around 700AD filled with death, destruction, and corruption. Robert Ross, the more modern character of the two entered World War I, 'the war to end all wars', in 1915AD. Shakespeare writes of Hamlet in the form of a play while Timothy Findley writes about Robert Ross in the form of a novel. Shakespeare and Findley portray Robert Ross and Hamlet as antiheroes by showing that Robert and Hamlet make the reader feel sympathetic while they do not conforming to male traits such as courage and strength.
The first characteristic of an antihero is that the main character makes the reader feel sympathetic to him or her. Shakespeare effectively pushes forth the idea that Hamlet is a victim of circumstance and by it the reader feels sympathetic for him. Before the play even begins, Hamlet's father dies in suspicious circumstances. This death and the later appeal to force by his dead father compel the reader to feel that Hamlet has the right to inflict revenge on whoever did such an atrocity. Similarly, when Robert Ross' closest companion, his sister, dies he is grief-stricken. What reaches out to the family, however, is the reaction of the dysfunctional family afterwards. His alcoholic mother tries to force him to kill one of the few pleasures of his deceased sister, the bunnies. The reader becomes sympathetic to such a grief-stricken character and feels sad that one so innocent would subject himself into going to war to avoid such a lachrymose life back home.
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The Wars Timothy Findley Sparknotes Summary
The Wars is a 1977 novel by Timothy Findley about the experiences of a young Canadian officer in World War I. Findley dedicated the novel to his uncle, Thomas Irving Findley, who fought in the First World War and survived. Findley drew upon letters his uncle had sent, as well as his verbal accounts of life on the front, to draw an image of the war in the novel. Findley reportedly spent a few days on a farm in Ontario, trying to remain warm and clean. Here he gained new respect for how cumbersome mud can make day to day life. Findley also educated himself on the various campaigns that took place in Europe during the times the novel takes place and even sought out a military historian to ensure that the events of the war had been chronicled accurately.
The Wars Timothy Findley
The novel took about six months for Findley to complete and went on to win the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1977. A film adaptation, which Findley also wrote, was made in 1981. A theatrical play version of the novel was produced by Dennis Garnhum in 2007.