The writers of Hamlet and The Wars, William Shakespeare and Timothy Findley respectively, transform their main characters from the expected war hero or powerful prince into that of an antihero. William Shakespeare presents Hamlet as a prince bent on revenge but unwilling to do it. Timothy Findley, on the other hand, sends Robert Ross off to war in hopes that he will finally make something of himself. Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, a state around 700AD filled with death, destruction, and corruption. Robert Ross, the more modern character of the two entered World War I, "the war to end all wars", in 1915AD. Shakespeare writes of Hamlet in the form of a play while Timothy Findley writes about Robert Ross in the form of a novel. Shakespeare and Findley portray Robert Ross and Hamlet as antiheroes by showing that Robert and Hamlet make the reader feel sympathetic while they do not conforming to male traits such as courage and strength.
             The first characteristic of an antihero is that the main character makes the reader feel sympathetic to him or her. Shakespeare effectively pushes forth the idea that Hamlet is a victim of circumstance and by it the reader feels sympathetic for him. Before the play even begins, Hamlet's father dies in suspicious circumstances. This death and the later appeal to force by his dead father compel the reader to feel that Hamlet has the right to inflict revenge on whoever did such an atrocity. Similarly, when Robert Ross' closest companion, his sister, dies he is grief-stricken. What reaches out to the family, however, is the reaction of the dysfunctional family afterwards. His alcoholic mother tries to force him to kill one of the few pleasures of his deceased sister, the bunnies. The reader becomes sympathetic to such a grief-stricken character and feels sad that one so innocent would subject himself into going to war to avoid such a lachrymose life back home.
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