The Unknown Soldier (novel)

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This article is about a Finnish novel. For the memorial, see Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. For other uses, see Unknown Soldier.

The Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon sotilas) is author Väinö Linna's first major novel and his other major work beside Under the North Star. Published in 1954, it is a story about the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union as told from the viewpoint of ordinary Finnish soldiers. Gritty and realistic, it was partly intended to shatter the myth of the noble, obedient Finnish soldier, and in that it succeeded admirably. In Linna's own words, he wished to give the Finnish soldier a brain, an organ lacking in earlier depictions — this was a barb directed at Johan Runeberg's The Tales of Ensign Stål, which admiringly portrays Finnish soldiers with big hearts and little independent intellect. The novel is based on Linna's own experiences, but is more or less fictional. In its structure and style, it may be compared to the war novels of James Jones.

The novel has no single central character (it both begins and ends with an ironical play on the narrator's omniscience), and its focus is on different responses to the experience of war. It tells the story of a machinegun platoon in the war from mobilisation to armistice. A picture of the whole nation in microcosm, the men come from all over the country, when in reality units were made up of men from the same region. The men have widely varying social backgrounds and political attitudes, and they all have their own ways of coping, but the general picture is one of a quite relaxedly businesslike attitude, and the men's disrespect for formalities and discipline is a source of frustration for some of the officers. They are all there just to get the job done, and official propaganda is to them a source of amusement, though some see it as outright offensive. Linna's own description of the men in the novel's final sentence is "aika velikultia" — something like "good old boys". The main officer characters are three lieutenants who embody different attitudes: one strict and aloof, one relaxed and fraternal, one idealistic and later disillusioned.

Linna excels in describing the psychology of his characters. He paints realistic yet deeply sympathetic portraits of a score of very different men: cowards and heroes, the naive upper-class idealist Kariluoto and the hardened working-class grunt Lehto, the platoon comedian Vanhala and the preternaturally strong-nerved Rokka, the politically indifferent Hietanen and the communist Lahtinen. It is only for the sternest officers of the Prussian school for whom he has little love. Many of his characters have come to be seen as archetypes of Finnish men, household names to whom reference can be made without explanation.

The novel received mixed reviews. Conservative critics, most notably Toini Havu in Helsingin sanomat, condemned it for adopting a purposely low vantage-point and ignoring the bigger picture. Linna was accused of making an unnecessary spectacle of dragging the country's patriotic ideals through the mud, and indeed his purpose had been to take such idealism down a peg. Other critics recognised Linna's achievement, however, and the public immediately took The Unknown Soldier as their own. It remains one of the best-selling books of all time in Finland.

Two movie versions of The Unknown Soldier have been made (see below), both of them very faithful to the original — of necessity, as the public would not have tolerated anything else.

An "uncensored" version of the book was published with much fanfare in 2000 under the name Sotaromaani (A War Novel, Linna's working title), revealing that some of Linna's critique of the officer corps and the often quite coarse language of the common soldiers had been removed in the original (though much of the so-called censorship seems to have been standard editorial changes and removal of tautology).

Unfortunately, the only English translation of the novel is faulty, with scenes removed and added for unspecified reasons, and is stylistically misleading as well.

The book shares a few scenes and one main character, Vilho Koskela, with Linna's other major work, the trilogy Under the North Star (Täällä Pohjantähden alla).

Two films have been made based on the novel, one in 1955 and a second one in 1985.

External links

[Finnish classic war film The Unknown Soldier opens old wounds in Russia (an article by Helsingin Sanomat from Jan 21, 2003)]

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