The Wars

The Wars

by

Timothy Findley

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Wars makes teaching easy.
A prostitute who works at Maria Dreyfus’s brothel, Wet Goods. She pairs up with Robert Ross when his fellow soldiers at the army training camp pressure him into going to the brothel. During their night together, Ella alternates between compassion and frustration toward Robert’s sexual inexperience and hesitance, since she is only paid if the man has sex with her. Her own nonchalant attitude toward sex is what convinces Robert to look through a spy hole into the adjoining room, where he is horrified to see Captain Taffler having sex with a man (the Swede).

Ella Quotes in The Wars

The The Wars quotes below are all either spoken by Ella or refer to Ella. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Trauma and War Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 17 Quotes

Nothing he’d read had covered this situation. Whores, of course, had been discussed at school but no one actually ever said this is what you do. They’d made it all up. But what they’d made up was not like this. At all. They’d flown from trapezes and made love in bath tubs and ravished several women to the bed posts, but no one had ever sat in a room with lilac wallpaper and been asked if there was “nothing special you’d like.”

Related Characters: Robert Ross, Ella
Page Number: 39-40
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Wars LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Wars PDF

Ella Quotes in The Wars

The The Wars quotes below are all either spoken by Ella or refer to Ella. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Trauma and War Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 17 Quotes

Nothing he’d read had covered this situation. Whores, of course, had been discussed at school but no one actually ever said this is what you do. They’d made it all up. But what they’d made up was not like this. At all. They’d flown from trapezes and made love in bath tubs and ravished several women to the bed posts, but no one had ever sat in a room with lilac wallpaper and been asked if there was “nothing special you’d like.”

Related Characters: Robert Ross, Ella
Page Number: 39-40
Explanation and Analysis: