The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines the term theme as "a specific and distinctive quality, characteristic, or concern." Themes help to enhance characters, their relationships, and the overall meaning of the novel. In the novel, The Wars by Timothy Findley, there are a numerous amount of underlying themes on pages one eighty-six to the end of the novel that will be explored.
He made a fist around his penis. He thought how small it was. He felt - all at once - appallingly alone. The bed seemed just a shelf on which he lay above a vast and whirling chasm. A sudden vision of obliteration struck him like a bomb. The women laughed. The music played. The horses whinnied softly in the dark. The candle guttered out. Robert heard a long white noise. Oblivion. He slept with his fist in its place and the cold, wet blooming of four hundred thousand possibilities - of all those lives that would never be - on his fingertips. (186).
In this passage, Robert was in depressed state of mind; he was masturbating and felt alone. During this, he realizes that he will have no legacy or future generation, that it ends with him," wet blooming of four hundred thousand possibilities - of all those lives that would never be - on his fingertips." Robert is masturbating into nothing therefore he cannot create life. "Oblivion," to be forgotten; Robert feels he would not have a future generation to remember him, carry on his name, or carry his traits. Therefore, oblivion is a theme. (186).
"His assailants, who he"d thought were crazies, had been his fellow soldiers. Maybe even his brother officers. He"d never know. He never saw their faces." At this point in the novel Robert had been raped by men he thought were crazy, but found out, by their voices, that they were his fellow officers. To Robert this is devastating because those he trusted, whom his life depended on, and helped to defend the country with were betraying him with this act.
