Secondary Sources Summary #3

This article is generally based on war itself and father-son relationships, particularly on World War I and Findley's interpretation of the war in his novel. The article talks about the the horror of war and goes a little into the extreme by saying that the fathers of the war raped their children. Not in a literal sense though, Findley implies that by the fathers creating this war, they are in turn "raping" their own children by pushing them into a war in which they are responsible for.

Lay not thy hand upon the lad, 


Neither do anything to him, the Angel of God commands. 


But the old man would not so - and slew his son ... 


And half the seed of Europe, one by one.... 


And slew his son and half the seed of Europe, one by one. 


It was rape. 


The scene stays. 


- Timothy Findley, Inside Memory ( I 5 055 I) 
A passage by Findley concerning the "rape" of war.

 The article goes on to talk about the novel and how it fails to include actual history of the war itself but focuses more on the life of Robert Ross, outside of the military battlefield. The novel The Wars is based more upon psychological warfare and the effects of war rather than actual military combat and history during World War I.




Hastings, Tom. ""Their fathers did it to them": Findley's appeal to the great war myth of a generational conflict in The Wars." Essays on Canadian Writing. 01 Jul. 1998: 85.eLibrary. Web. 06 Oct. 2011.