The wars

The Wars: Animal Imagery Sigmund Freud once argued that "our species has a volcanic potential to erupt in aggression . . . [and] that we harbour not only positive survival instincts but also a self-destructive 'death instinct', which we usually displace towards others in aggression" (Myers 666). Timothy Findley, born in 1930 in Toronto, Canada, explores our human predilection towards violence in his third novel, The Wars. It is human brutality that initiates the horrors of World War I, the …

…animals that he encounters alludes to the similarity between all humans and animals. The animals in the novel suffer at the hands of humankind and the hostile environment we create. Although a common assumption is that animals are vicious and wild, there is no evidence of this in the novel. Malice appears to be solely attributable to humankind. This is the truism that Findley depicts in his telling of the tragic story of Robert Ross.