BOOK CHOICE SUBMISSION

Brett Perry                                BRETT PERRY

Ms. Breivic      
ENG4U

Feb/14/11

Book Choice Submission

    Novel: The Wars

    Author: Timothy Findley

    Publication date: 1977

    Pages: 190

     I have chosen the novel the wars because I have an interest in warfare, especially world war I and world war II. Old time war really interests me because it is the first time that certain types of weapons are used. It was these wars that introduced certain types of warfare and influenced weapons and war of modern times. The title was the most captivating to me out of all the books on the list we had to choose from. Your not suppose to choose a book because of its cover but I have, due to the trench warfare it depicts. Beyond just my interests in warfare and history i have also been reassured from a few good sources that Timothy Findley is one of the greatest well known Canadian authors of all time. My teacher Ms. Breivik told me it was a good choice because Findley really gets his point across and makes things clear and really aggressively describes his stories

  

    The Novel "The Wars" so far is actually rather interesting it’s a story of a young Robert Ross Who loses all will to live when his sister dies. He joins with the Canadian Forces and comes across a lot of challenges he has to face. It’s enjoyable so far to what I have read. The plot is well layed out and there is a lot of potential for this novel to be great in my mind. Its already worldly renowned as a classic and hopefully through the rest of my reading I too think of it as a truly amazing and classic novel.

 

   I am Currently in about 26 pages of the novel I think the more I read the more interesting it will become. It has layed out the entire plot, I know exactly what is going on with his family and the story line so far. The book is narrated by a historian trying to put together all the pieces of Robert Ross’s life through the memories of the people he knew. I now know all of the relationships he had with people and what he thought of them I also know what his feelings are and how he feels about everything going on around him. I like that all of these things have been communicated clearly to me and it makes the story a whole lot easier to read and understand.

    The setting right now is a set of train tracks with a town on one side behind the character, and a burning medical supply shop in front. There is an abandoned train beside the train tracks. And a horse and dog companion standing on the tracks. The characters name is Robert. The mood is a sense of dreary and rainy weather and an idea of pain caused from a broken nose. Robert has just released over 100 horses from the train and now they are all running towards the woods at 1 am in the morning.

    Although it is really early in the book and I don’t know what is going to happen. I am going to shoot in the dark and say that him releasing all of these horses is a bit of fore shadowing for the story. Maybe it will talk about prisoner of war camps, or possibly the horses running away is a symbol of the war ending and everyone getting to go home. I do not know what happens in this book and that was a complete guess but this is what comes to mind when I think of 130 horses being set free.

 I have currently found three secondary sources the first i found was a critical reception of Findleys work on the Gale databases. The part i found the most interesting was how other authors believe he brought his characters to life through psychological insight. The second secondary source was on the Canadian Encyclopedia. It talked about Findleys death and his legacy of how his writing will always exist because it was so detailed. I found this interesting because it talked about how he viewed his writing and always critisized it even though other authors believed it was wonderful. The third secondary source was from Canadian Literature and it was interesting to me because it fully explained Findleys style of writing and it introduced  me to how he painted pictures with his words using photographic technique. This is my favourite style of writing because it fully explains content to you in full details.

(Map of where world war 1 took place the Triple Entente would
be an alliance with the Canadian side of the battle )

    One line that sticks out to me so far is “ Then we shall all go together”  this is what Robert says just before he lets all of the horses out of confinement and sets them free. Then all of the horses run of together into the forest. He does not have to set all of theses horses free but he does anyway. This suggests to me that its like “no one gets left behind” rule number one when fighting in a war. It sends themes of war to me and there hasn’t really been a mention of fighting at all yet.