Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons^™

Canadians In The Manichean Universe Of War: The Novels Of Ralph Connor, Anna Branach-Kallas

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The purpose of my article is an analysis of two war novels by Canadian best-selling author Charles W. Gordon, known to his readers under the pseudonym of Ralph Connor (1830-1937): The Major (1917) and The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land (1919). At the age of fifty-four, Connor was sent to the front as a preacher; only a fourth of his battalion survived, which made his determined to support the cause of the Empire in North America. His sentimental romances were written to support the war effort (The Major) or consolidate the myth of Canada’s valorous sacrifice in …