The Wars

Symbolism (The Wars)

Since the appearance of The Wars in 1977, readers have been quick to point out the rich patterns of symbolism in the novel. This abundance of meaningful images is part, of course, of the visual appeal of the novel; as Timothy Findley once commented in an interview, "Everything in that book has a life of its own. It's a carrier too -- all the objects are carriers of someone else's spirit" (Aitken 87). One need only think of the connection in Robert's mind between rabbits and Rowena; when he glimpses Rodwell's animals at the front, he is instantly transported back into the past, into his memories of his dead sister.

One source of this richness in the work is Findley's attitude toward physical objects -- an attitude which he frequently expresses in interviews. For him, the visual world is a symbolic world; objects do, as he says, carry spirit. In his play, Can You See Me Yet?, the main character, Cassandra, carries around with her in the asylum, a photograph album with pictures she claims are of her family. In The Wars, the symbolic photograph returns, in the official photo of Robert as a soldier, "Dead men are serious -- that's what this photograph is striving to say ... I lived -- was young -- and died" (49). It's as though Findley is aware that objects are icons -- that they have a symbolic value attached to them. In the novel which appeared after The Wars -- Famous Last Words -- Findley even uses characters as icons -- as symbols of an age; as he once observed, "there is the moment when you realize that you are surrounded by icons, and that is what history is about" (Aitken 79).

Again, Findley's involvement in the theatre is an important influence on his work as a novelist; working both as an actor and a playwright impresses upon you that even the slightest actions of a character reveal depths of meaning. And, of course, the playwright is dependent on visual symbolism to carry a good deal of the message of the play: what is the setting? what objects does the character come into contact with? It makes sense that Findley would write novels and stories in which symbolism -- the visual world and the meanings it evokes -- should play such an overwhelming role.

Critics of the novel have, as I've mentioned, explored some of this symbolism; those symbolic elements which have received the most attention, in fact, are the natural ones whose names are inscribed on Robert's gravestone: "EARTH AND AIR AND FIRE AND WATER" (190). This is a good place to begin; the symbolism of natural elements supports a whole framework of ideas and other symbols in the novel having to do with nature versus artificiality or technology. Also, the symbols of earth, air, water, and fire do not remain static throughout the novel; the meanings associated with them change according to whether they are associated with domestic life or with the nightmare world of the wars. As we shall see, Findley's symbols are fascinating because they are constantly evolving.

Earth, for instance, undergoes several transformations in the novel, and appears in many forms. As we've already seen, the narrator introduces us to the unnatural world of the wars by showing us this natural element in a horrifying form: mud. Note how obsessively the narrator describes it: "The mud. There are no good similes. Mud must be a Flemish word. Mud was invented here. Mudland might have been its name. The ground is the colour of steel. Over most of the plain there isn't a trace of topsoil: only sand and clay" (71). It seems strange, to us, that such a common, unspectacular compound as mud should have such an elaborate description; indeed, the narrator suggests, by saying there are "no good similes," that the mud here goes beyond description. What has been natural, taken-for-granted, has now, in the world of war, become an exquisite terror. As we shall see, this forms a pattern in Findley's use of natural imagery: the ordinary, even the life-bearing becomes treacherous.

This dark transformation is hinted at, even in this description, by the use of an unnatural metaphor to describe a natural object: the mud is "the colour of steel." What was natural, the nurturing ground for vegetation, suddenly becomes allied to technology, the stuff of tanks, submarines, and so on. Findley seals the unnatural quality of this natural element by adding that topsoil isn't to be had -- only sand and clay. Topsoil, the beneficial environment for seeds and young plants, is entirely absent here; so too the battlefield will kill rather than nurture the young members, the seeds, of the human race.

This turning of earth from a giver of life to a depriver of life is dramatized not long after this passage, when Robert is nearly