Analysis Of Marine Tuner: A Nineteen-Year-Old Canadian Soldier

As a nineteen-year-old Canadian soldier from the start, Robert is seen transitioning through an existential crisis, encountering with nothingness to embracing the depths of life. In relation to Findley’s text when Robert enters the war, he is told by his mother that metaphorically put on a new set of attire to toughen up psychologically, emotionally, or physically to face the inevitable everyday battles of war he has to fight by making sacrifices with the unexpected challenges that come up in the future. This can be seen when Robert commands all soldiers to “hold their torn pieces of cloth in their hand[...] ‘piss on them’[...] the ammonia in their urine would turn the chlorine into harmless crystals that could not be breathed” (Findley, 126). Ideally, this was the steps he

Thus, at this point Robert endures in a “supreme ordeal”; facing the possibility of death. Towards the end of Roberts journey he meets with Marian Turner, where he is seen both burned and hopeless, practically on his death bed. Having to see Robert in such a condition, Marine Tuner offers him death, in order for him to replenish all of his sufferings. “I’d given him some morphine […] I kept some aside for Robert Ross” (Findley, 194). He then answers by saying “Not yet” (Findley, 195). When Robert says “Not Yet”, it signifies his continuation of life by having an embodiment of hope. This act exhibits his journey to prevail even though he is not physically able to make a change in his journey, the words he uses enables a sense of meaning for Robert to make a change in “the ordinary world”, having to take from what he’s learned from “the special world”. Therefore, this desire manifest Robert’s journey of embracing life. Lastly, upon the ending of the novel, the archivist is seen with a photograph of Robert and Juliet, taken a year before Roberts