UNKNOWN SOLDIERS (a.k.a The Unknown Soldier) (1954)
BY VÄINÖ LINNA
UPLOADER'S NOTE:
This novel is probably better known by its earlier English
title, The Unknown Soldier, which was also used for the
two film adaptations. This is Penguin Books' new translation
by Liesl Yamaguchi, published in 2015.
Included formats: azw3, epub, mobi, pdf, rtf
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The Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon sotilas) is author Väinö Linna's
first major novel and his other major work besides 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.
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.
Penguin Books published a new English translation of the book in 2015
with the title Unknown Soldiers.
PLOT:
The novel has no single central character (it both begins and ends with
an ironic play on the narrator's omniscience), and its focus is on
different responses to the experience of war. It tells the story of a
machine gun company in the war from mobilisation to armistice. A picture
of the whole nation in microcosm, the men come from all over the country
(a result of Linna's unusual patchwork regiment - units were normally 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, both their own and that of
the enemy, is to them a source of amusement or 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 but
brave and loyal to his men.
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 initially naive, eventually brave upper-class
idealist Kariluoto, the down-to-earth Koskela, the hardened and cynical
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.