Medicine River and The Wars.
Both Thomas King’s Medicine River and Timothy Findley’s The Wars effectively utilize the atmospheric aspect of photography, which sets the mood of the novels to illuminate memories, thus bringing more meaning to the contemporary audience. Thomas King’s Medicine River explicitly gives chronicles to modern indigenous people lives in Canada. The story in Medicine River is conversationally told by the protagonist Will while featuring various flashbacks. The novel’s dominant themes are memory and identity, as described by Will Thompson. In his pursuit of identification with his father, Will Thompson recounts memories of his absent father by reading the many letters written to his mother Rose by his missing father. Timothy Findley’s The Wars focuses on Robert’s life from childhood until his death at twenty-five. Like Will’s life, Robert is depicted as a single parent living with his mother, Ross. Robert decides to volunteer, joining the army after Rowena’s death from a wheelchair whose death is caused by hydrocephalus illness. Rowena is the eldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Ross, implying that she is Robert’s eldest sister. The Wars rotates around Robert’s presence in the military in France, Belgium, and Germany. Therefore, Medicine River and The Wars utilize pictures to depict the theme of memory by portraying the protagonist’s attitude, the difference between the past and present, and the development of the plot.
Findley’s The Wars and King’s Medicine River are similar in their portrayal of the theme of memory through their main protagonist’s attitude towards their past. In Thomas King’s Medicine River, ill who is a photographer and owning a photography studio in Medicine River is depicted as filled with pain over his family’s past. Will wishes that life could get back to the days when his parents were together to attain an identity with his biological father because of the separation they had, where his father Bob was working in a Rodeo firm while Will and the rest of the family were living in Medicine River in that the presence of his father could only be felt from the letters written to his mother, Rose. King effectively elaborates on the symbolic role of Will in the novel Medicine River to emphasize the themes of identity and memory. Photography in Medicine River is effectively utilized as a symbol of identity in the modern native community in Canada. Because of his identity crisis, Will bases his photography work on negatives. Will says, “I will shoot the negatives” to illustrate his desire and pursuit for identifying himself with his lost father (King 80). Will develops the negatives to pictures as a symbolic illustration of acceptance with his identity as a half-Blackfoot. The pictures constructed out of the negatives turn out good as a symbol of total comfort and acceptance of Will’s memories of his father since at the end of the novel, Will makes peace with the possibility that he will never know much about his dad and feels at peace identifying as a Blackfoot and he looks forward to creating a family and life with the quality values he has learned from the past years since his childhood.
Similarly, photography in “The Wars’” shape Robert’s attitude towards his past. The novel’s main protagonist Robert is depicted as bitter about his past. Findley effectively inserts the audience in a narrative by making them participatory characters in the novel by considering looking into Robert’s family archives by the bibliographer, where after repositories of memory the bibliographer pauses to study a photograph of Robert and her sister before the war, he turns the picture over and reads what is written on the back: “Look! You can see our breath” (Findley 54). Through that, the audience is able to see Robert in their imaginations. Through archived fiction, yields memory, and imagination, The Wars prompts audiences to check into the protagonist’s family photographs and other old documents such as books and letters in the modern world. Like Will, whose father died in a road accident without getting to know him fully, Robert is disturbed by the death of his disabled sister being Rowena’s guardian, Robert feels guilty when he learns that Rowena has fallen from her wheelchair. Robert says, “I was her guardian” to illustrate a sense of guilt (Findley 62). Robert is filled with guilt over losing Rowena and believes that if he lives away from his family, the guilt will leave him (Findley 55). Robert makes each proceeding step with the hope that his past pains would be taken away as he is fully committed to the war.
In both “The Wars” and “Medicine River,” photographs play a role in describing society’s progress by giving a difference between the past and the present. In the entire plot of “Medicine River,” photographs critically illustrate life’s events. The various photographs also act as cryptographs that make the modern audience reflect on the past state of things (Brydon 70). Will has been creating stories regarding his father to tell his friends, such as Harlen when his mother gives him photographs of his father. The picture is depicted as the source of truth to Will and makes him stop telling his father’s stories. The picture enables Will to stop raising blames as he appreciates his mother, and draws from his identity from her and the community with comfort. The picture teaches Will that his father was hardworking, and he opts to follow the same. Will also learns that his father was a smoker and that it enabled him to learn about the disadvantages of smoking. David Plume also presents before Will a picture of a wounded knee to stir his memories of the past. Will negatively comments on the picture’s quality and poor storage. Will also states ideas of the photo’s actual source to point out that photos cannot be depended upon in expressing absolute truth. Truth brought up through pictures in the novel “Medicine River” appears in varying ways whereby some are reliable while some truth proves unreliable.
In Findley’s “The Wars,” photography plays a vital role in illustrating Robert’s past and present experiences in the first world war. The first world war took place between 1914 and 1918 before Timothy Findley was born. Timothy’s animated images of 1977 depicting war work illustrate the difference between ancient war mechanisms and the modern strategies applied by warriors. In the present day, ethics have been lost in the fighting. Findley’s photographs are, therefore, the memory of the underlying differences between the past and the present. Innocent persons and animals are set on fire, an act that was anciently viewed as unethical by society. In his past, Robert is concerned about care for the innocent. Robert says, “People can only be found in what they do” to mean that whatever is done defines who someone is in their real-life (Findley 175). Thus, Robert’s determination to save the horses reveals him as a hero and humane. However, after he joined the war, his present is filled with mass killings like other soldiers.
Furthermore, photographs in both novels play a vital role in the development of the plot. In Medicine River, Will’s family portrait significantly contributes to Thomas King’s plot development. The family portrait gives memories of the cause of Bob’s death since it has been snapped after his death through a road accident (King 97). The family picture also gives Will’s attitude towards his father’s death as he puts it at the end of a book. The photo displays three people, including Ross, James, and Will. However, the photo taken by Will for Joyce portrays the whole community. Will’s family suffers from an identity crisis due to his mother’s marriage with a white man. The audience may be amazed at how Will’s family relates to their extended family (Straton 12). Thus, the photo for Joyce Blue Horn takes the audience back and revives their memories of the past. Upon examination of the blue horn family picture, it features the entire community, and Will is featured lively and relaxed as an illustration of acceptance that he will never know much about his father, and he decides to focus on the future though still anxious about his mixed identity. The community portrait reveals to the reader that Will has entirely accepted to be a member of the Medicine River. Developing acceptance as a part of the community is a problematic task taken by Will. Will attempts to make all community members appear in the photograph and have to fix the camera carefully for utilizing memory between the past and present, and development of the plot in the novel.
Findley also uses photography for the development of his novel’s plot through the protagonists’ memories. Every picture is worth a thousand words, and thus, by looking at a picture, it communicates a lot about various events and meanings. Images portray Robert’s whole experience in the army, which acts as Findley’s plot directive. The photographs in the novel significantly enable Findley to establish trust with the audience and create a sense of reality in the war story (Christie 53). “The War” novel by Findley gives various images illustrating Robert’s change of life and the effects of the war on both soldiers and civilians. By concentrating on the photographs, the audience can notice how Ross is negatively affected by the war to the extend of resuming to drinking and smoking with the thought that this would deliver him from depression. As Robert looks at Rowen’s pictures, he is thrown into guilt that haunts him throughout the novel. Robert’s decision to join the army aims to bring to an ending his memories about his sister’s death. However, he is haunted by the killings in the war as they drive his memories back home (Findley 155). The picture illustrating massively burnt horses enable Findley to expound on the innocent massacres caused by the first world war in his entire plot. Therefore, as used in the novel, photography demonstrates that conflicts affect not only soldiers but also innocent members of society.
Conclusively, Medicine River and The Wars utilize pictures to depict the theme of memory and identity by portraying the protagonist’s attitude, the difference between the past and present, and the development of the plot. Medicine River utilizes photography to reveal the theme of identity and memory explicitly. Will uses photography to give a comparison of his past and present life in Blackfoot. Therefore, historical novel writers should utilize the aspect of photography to appeal to the audience and bring realism.
Works Cited
Christie, Stuart. “Time-Out: (Slam)Dunking Photographic Realism In Thomas King’s Medicine River.” Studies In American Indian Literature, vol 11, no. 2, 1999, pp. 51-56., Accessed 13 Aug 2020.
Findley, Timothy. The Wars.1st ed., 1977dited by PHILIPPE TORTELL, MARK TURIN, and MARGOT YPUNG. Published by: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
King, Thomas. Medicine River. 1st ed., 1989. First published by Viking Canada in 1989
Straton, Florence. “There Is No Bentham Street In Calgary: Panoptic Discourses And Thomas King’s Medicine River.”. Contemporary Literary Criticism, Accessed 13 Aug 2020.
Brydon, Diana. “It could not be told:” Making Meaning in Timothy Findley’s The Wars.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 21.1 (1986): 62-79.
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