Crap

            Aurora: In your books there is also a search for a hero. In The Wars, the protagonist is seen as a hero because he cares for human and animal life, and then dies because of that conviction.
             Findley: He died for life. The thing that moved me in writing that book was that Robert Ross believed above all else in life. If you couldn't save people, but you could save the horses, you were, in fact, saving life. You were making a statement about life. The whole point of life is that life itself is the embodiment of hope. That is why the birth of a child is always so moving.
             Aurora: In The Wars, you write of Robert Ross: "He did the thing that no one else would ever dare to think of doing. And that to me is as good a definition of hero as you'll get. Even when the thing that's done is something of which you disapprove.".
             Aurora: You also suggest in The Wars that people are capable of any atrocity. If they can imagine it, then they can do it-the flame-throwers, for example.
             Findley: That was an instance of someone asking, "What is the most insidious, terrifying thing you can do?" Nothing is more frightening than fire, and so they created the flame-thrower. That thinking has continued to this day with the creation of new weapons as a means of creating terror. To terrorize people into submission.
             The novel explodes the myths of "ordinary" and "heroic." It describes the place of ordinary men in an epic situation, a situation which magnifies action until it seems either heroic or insane - or both. By examining humanity at war, it can be seen that no one is ordinary; ordinary does not innately exist in humanity; we create it through our accepted, written, historical context. Humanity, divested from the pretty wrapping of social manners, turns out to be flawed, even when precious. .
             The novel critically, often shockingly, explores the nature of humanity. It raises the question: what is history? It asks: what is an ordinary human being? It cries: human activity is ordinary or heroic depending on the context it exists within; war is a sickening context.