I, You, He and She. PoV in The Wars

"They look at you and rearrange their thoughts" (3).
"You begin at the archives with photographs".
"Part of what you see you recognize" (4).
"Trancript: Marian Turner - 1 'You will understand, from what took place, why I cannot tell you what he looked like." (9)

You! That is so very special in The Wars. Never have I've seen (to my memory which is, to be honest, not so great anyways) a novel which places YOU into it. Above are four lines, put into the first three chapters of The Wars which are told in second person narrative point of view, and this definitely has an impact (though to be honest, everything in the novel has a impact).

First, it brings you into the book quite literally and metaphorically. The reader becomes a character in the book which places him/her in the story, forcing us to connect more with the novel. However, at the same time, this distances the reader from the characters. Imagine if the novel started immediately with Robert Ross's life and the death of Rowena. This gives a more intimate feel to the family, because we are started right off the bat with them.

But no, we are started with us, YOU, being the explorer through time. We will look throughout these photographs and newspaper clippings for the faint hint of Robert Ross's life and experiences which cannot be told from another person (mostly because they are either dead, unable to recount their experiences, or choose not to). Indeed, the only person able is Marian Turner, which also uses second person narrative heavily. We are both detached from the life of Robert Ross, but at the same time closer to our own experience in deciphering what happened. This is (possibly) Findley's idea in putting us into the novel.

Then at the start of the fourth chapter, we are back to the usual and comfortable third person narrative in our research into Robert's life allows a third person telling of his life. To be honest, while second person is a unique new world, I am not interested in reading 200 pages of saying how I shot a horse with a revolver my dad gave me or placed a rag with my piss to my mouth and nose.

-Allen Duong
"Constantly changing, immortal yet fragile."