Execution (novel)
Encyclopedia
Execution is a 1958 war novel by Canadian
novelist and Second World War veteran Colin McDougall
(1917–1984). Although it won McDougall the 1958 Governor General's Award for English language fiction
, it was his only novel, and after publishing it to wide acclaim he retreated into a quiet life as Registrar of McGill University
in Montreal
. Nevertheless, Execution stands with Timothy Findley
's The Wars
and Hugh MacLennan
's Barometer Rising
as one of the most widely read and studied Canadian war novels of the twentieth century.
, Execution follows the fictional Canadian 2nd Rifles during the Italian campaign
of 1943. Led by the flamboyant Brigadier Ian Kildare (a modern miles gloriosus
, or braggart soldier), the Canadians land on Sicily
where they meet with little resistance from the Italian Army
, composed mostly of hapless conscripts who want no part in the war.
Despite Kildare's strict orders for his men to shoot Italian deserters on sight, the Canadians take kindly to a pair of buffoonish? Italian deserters, more notable for their culinary skills than military prowess. Impetuously, Kildare orders the Canadians to execute the Italians. The Canadians are caught between the obligation to follow orders and the sense that executing the two Italians in cold blood is ethically unjustifiable—not to mention it being a violation of the Geneva Convention. The brutal execution of the two Italians forces the Canadians to confront the ethics of warfare, now that "the enemy" is no longer a distant and faceless target. Major Bunny Bazin, the most battle-hardened and philosophical of the Canadians, voices the novel's central theme when he states that "execution is... the ultimate degradation of man." Here the term "execution" works both literally (the killing of the Italians as a brutal act) and as a metaphor
(war as a form of mass execution).
The novel's main protagonist, Lieutenant (later Major) John Adam (a semi-autobiographical foil for McDougall), is an efficient soldier and leader, who nevertheless finds "the vulture fear" inhabiting his soul after the execution of the Italians. Bound to protect and lead his men as they march through Italy, from Ortona
to the Hitler Line near Monte Cassino
, Adam finds himself struggling to maintain the composure fitting a commander, as an inner "horror" gnaws at his conscience (Adam's reflections occasionally resemble those of Marlow in Joseph Conrad
's Heart of Darkness
).
Eventually, Adam and his men stumble on a chance to redeem themselves when one of their own comrades, Rifleman Jones, a mildly retarded but efficient infantryman, is sentenced to be executed for treason by his own army, after he falls in with a ring of corrupt soldiers who murder an American. Although everyone, including a newly promoted General Kildare, knows that "Jonesy" is a scapegoat for the real murderers, the execution must go ahead out of political expediency. Led by Adam, the men wage a tenacious campaign to have Jonesy freed, but all efforts eventually fail. When Jonesy is led out to be executed, the officer in charge of the execution faints, and Adam is forced to command the firing squad himself.
Execution ends with Adam and the other men regaining a measure of their lost confidence, although Major Bazin dies on the battlefield.
As Warren Cariou
shows in his afterword
to the New Canadian Library
edition of Execution, the novel is not a realist novel, but an existential
meditation on the ethics of war. Like Herman Wouk
's The Caine Mutiny
or Leo Tolstoy
's War and Peace
, both of which were key models for McDougall, Execution is a novel that combines visceral depictions of combat with philosophical questions about the blurred boundaries between good and evil. Jones is considered to be a scapegoat.
Other important themes include the abuse of military power, especially in one scene involving Allied general
s planning an attack against the Germans that is bound to fail, and the isolation and alienation
of front-line soldiers from mainstream society.
The second execution scene establishes Jonesy as a Christ
-like figure, and his death is a symbolic atonement for the Canadians' "sin" of murdering the two Italians.
(2002).
The play was directed by Robert Florey, and writing credits went to Frederick Brady (for adaptation) and Colin McDougall (for story).
Like the book, the film seems inspired by the real life story of Private Pringle, yet focuses not on the alleged criminal but on the other men of his unit. Unlike the book, there are no combat scenes, as the action takes place during the winter stalemate, and in fact given the French location, lack of front line positions, and other evidence given in dialogue, the soldiers in the film are located well behind the front line.
The main characters include a Provost Corps officer sent by higher headquarters to oversee the execution, the infantry officer who had lost his nerve in the fighting in Normandy and wanted to gain redemption by carrying out the execution, and the men of the firing squad including a stereotypical French-Canadian sergeant and an equally stereotyped halfwit with the comically unlikely name of "Smedley".
The movie was a typical low-budget Canadian affair, with a small dirt road in back-woods Ontario masquerading as Maple Leaf Route, and little sense of scale in terms of equipment, locations, or number of characters on screen.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
novelist and Second World War veteran Colin McDougall
Colin McDougall
Colin Malcom McDougall DSO was a Canadian author best known for his 1958 Governor General's Award-winning novel Execution.-Biography:...
(1917–1984). Although it won McDougall the 1958 Governor General's Award for English language fiction
Governor General's Award for English language fiction
This is a list of recipients of the Governor General's Award for English language fiction.-1930s:*1936: Bertram Brooker, Think of the Earth*1937: Laura Salverson, The Dark Weaver*1938: Gwethalyn Graham, Swiss Sonata...
, it was his only novel, and after publishing it to wide acclaim he retreated into a quiet life as Registrar of McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
. Nevertheless, Execution stands with Timothy Findley
Timothy Findley
Timothy Irving Frederick Findley, OC, O.Ont was a Canadian novelist and playwright. He was also informally known by the nickname Tiff or Tiffy, an acronym of his initials.-Biography:...
's The Wars
The Wars
The Wars is a 1977 novel by Timothy Findley telling the story of a young Canadian officer in World War I. First published by Clarke Irwin, it won the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1977.-Plot overview:...
and Hugh MacLennan
Hugh MacLennan
John Hugh MacLennan, CC, CQ was a Canadian author and professor of English at McGill University. He won five Governor General's Awards and a Royal Bank Award.-Family and childhood:...
's Barometer Rising
Barometer Rising
Barometer Rising is a Canadian novel by Hugh MacLennan. The story takes place in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and focuses on the effects of the Halifax Explosion and a romance plot. It is often included in Canadian high school curriculums....
as one of the most widely read and studied Canadian war novels of the twentieth century.
Plot summary
Based in part on McDougall's experience as an officer with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light InfantryPrincess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry is one of the three regular force infantry regiments of the Canadian Army. The regiment is composed of four battalions including a primary reserve battalion, for a total of 2,000 soldiers...
, Execution follows the fictional Canadian 2nd Rifles during the Italian campaign
Italian Campaign (World War II)
The Italian Campaign of World War II was the name of Allied operations in and around Italy, from 1943 to the end of the war in Europe. Joint Allied Forces Headquarters AFHQ was operationally responsible for all Allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre, and it planned and commanded the...
of 1943. Led by the flamboyant Brigadier Ian Kildare (a modern miles gloriosus
Miles Gloriosus
Miles Gloriosus is a stock character of a boastful soldier from the comic theatre of ancient Rome, and variations on this character have appeared in drama and fiction ever since. The character derives from the alazôn or "braggart" of the Greek Old Comedy...
, or braggart soldier), the Canadians land on Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
where they meet with little resistance from the Italian Army
Italian Army
The Italian Army is the ground defence force of the Italian Armed Forces. It is all-volunteer force of active-duty personnel, numbering 108,355 in 2010. Its best-known combat vehicles are the Dardo infantry fighting vehicle, the Centauro tank destroyer and the Ariete tank, and among its aircraft...
, composed mostly of hapless conscripts who want no part in the war.
Despite Kildare's strict orders for his men to shoot Italian deserters on sight, the Canadians take kindly to a pair of buffoonish? Italian deserters, more notable for their culinary skills than military prowess. Impetuously, Kildare orders the Canadians to execute the Italians. The Canadians are caught between the obligation to follow orders and the sense that executing the two Italians in cold blood is ethically unjustifiable—not to mention it being a violation of the Geneva Convention. The brutal execution of the two Italians forces the Canadians to confront the ethics of warfare, now that "the enemy" is no longer a distant and faceless target. Major Bunny Bazin, the most battle-hardened and philosophical of the Canadians, voices the novel's central theme when he states that "execution is... the ultimate degradation of man." Here the term "execution" works both literally (the killing of the Italians as a brutal act) and as a metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
(war as a form of mass execution).
The novel's main protagonist, Lieutenant (later Major) John Adam (a semi-autobiographical foil for McDougall), is an efficient soldier and leader, who nevertheless finds "the vulture fear" inhabiting his soul after the execution of the Italians. Bound to protect and lead his men as they march through Italy, from Ortona
Ortona
Ortona is a coastal town and municipality of the Province of Chieti in the Italian region of Abruzzo, with some 23,000 inhabitants.Ortona was the site of fierce fighting between German and Canadian forces during the Italian campaign in World War II...
to the Hitler Line near Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about southeast of Rome, Italy, c. to the west of the town of Cassino and altitude. St. Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order, here around 529. It was the site of Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944...
, Adam finds himself struggling to maintain the composure fitting a commander, as an inner "horror" gnaws at his conscience (Adam's reflections occasionally resemble those of Marlow in Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
's Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
).
Eventually, Adam and his men stumble on a chance to redeem themselves when one of their own comrades, Rifleman Jones, a mildly retarded but efficient infantryman, is sentenced to be executed for treason by his own army, after he falls in with a ring of corrupt soldiers who murder an American. Although everyone, including a newly promoted General Kildare, knows that "Jonesy" is a scapegoat for the real murderers, the execution must go ahead out of political expediency. Led by Adam, the men wage a tenacious campaign to have Jonesy freed, but all efforts eventually fail. When Jonesy is led out to be executed, the officer in charge of the execution faints, and Adam is forced to command the firing squad himself.
Execution ends with Adam and the other men regaining a measure of their lost confidence, although Major Bazin dies on the battlefield.
Themes and symbolism
The novel espouses McDougall's thesis that although the Canadians inhabit a brutal and unforgiving world, they are not intrinsically immoral. War makes men act brutally and inhumanely, but at their root is an essential goodness that even war cannot subsume completely.As Warren Cariou
Warren Cariou
Warren Cariou is a writer and Associate Professor of English at the University of Manitoba.- Biography :Warren Cariou received a B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan and an MA and PhD from the University of Toronto . In 1999 he published a book of short stories: The Exalted Company of Roadside...
shows in his afterword
Afterword
An afterword is a literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of literature. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed....
to the New Canadian Library
New Canadian Library
The New Canadian Library is a publishing imprint of the Canadian company McClelland and Stewart. The series aims to present classic works of Canadian literature in paperback. Each work published in the series includes a short essay by another notable Canadian writer, discussing the historical...
edition of Execution, the novel is not a realist novel, but an existential
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
meditation on the ethics of war. Like Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...
's The Caine Mutiny
The Caine Mutiny
The Caine Mutiny is a 1952 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and deals with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships...
or Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's War and Peace
War and Peace
War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...
, both of which were key models for McDougall, Execution is a novel that combines visceral depictions of combat with philosophical questions about the blurred boundaries between good and evil. Jones is considered to be a scapegoat.
Other important themes include the abuse of military power, especially in one scene involving Allied general
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
s planning an attack against the Germans that is bound to fail, and the isolation and alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
of front-line soldiers from mainstream society.
The second execution scene establishes Jonesy as a Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
-like figure, and his death is a symbolic atonement for the Canadians' "sin" of murdering the two Italians.
Historical basis
Jonesy's execution is based in part on the real-life execution of Private Harold Pringle, a Canadian soldier executed by his own army in Italy and given a full historical treatment in Andrew Clark's book, A Keen SoldierA Keen Soldier
A Keen Soldier: The Execution of Second World War Private Harold Pringle by Andrew Clark is a historical study of the only execution of a Canadian soldier for military crimes committed during the Second World War. Harold Pringle...
(2002).
Four Star Playhouse
Episode 87 of Four Star Playhouse featured a story called "The Firing Squad" and was televised originally on 6 October 1955 (Episode 1 of Season 4).The play was directed by Robert Florey, and writing credits went to Frederick Brady (for adaptation) and Colin McDougall (for story).
Firing Squad
A made for television movie aired in 1991, using the novel for inspiration, also entitled Firing Squad. The film differed from the book significantly, taking place in France in the winter of 1944 (oddly enough, during the timeframe depicted, the Canadians in Northwest Europe were concentrated in the Nijmegen Salient). A fictional unit, the Alberta Fusiliers, is depicted, as part of a fictional formation - presumably a "Sixth Division" wearing black formation patches.Like the book, the film seems inspired by the real life story of Private Pringle, yet focuses not on the alleged criminal but on the other men of his unit. Unlike the book, there are no combat scenes, as the action takes place during the winter stalemate, and in fact given the French location, lack of front line positions, and other evidence given in dialogue, the soldiers in the film are located well behind the front line.
The main characters include a Provost Corps officer sent by higher headquarters to oversee the execution, the infantry officer who had lost his nerve in the fighting in Normandy and wanted to gain redemption by carrying out the execution, and the men of the firing squad including a stereotypical French-Canadian sergeant and an equally stereotyped halfwit with the comically unlikely name of "Smedley".
The movie was a typical low-budget Canadian affair, with a small dirt road in back-woods Ontario masquerading as Maple Leaf Route, and little sense of scale in terms of equipment, locations, or number of characters on screen.
See also
- Battle of OrtonaBattle of OrtonaThe Battle of Ortona was a small, yet extremely fierce, battle fought between a battalion of German Fallschirmjäger from the German 1st Parachute Division under Generalleutnant Richard Heidrich, and assaulting Canadian forces from the 1st Canadian Infantry Division under Major General Chris Vokes...
- Battle of Monte CassinoBattle of Monte CassinoThe Battle of Monte Cassino was a costly series of four battles during World War II, fought by the Allies against Germans and Italians with the intention of breaking through the Winter Line and seizing Rome.In the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was being anchored by Germans...
- Canadian Army