The four classic elements are all represented in this novel, the element of earth appears in the first section of Part Two. The statements “All the great armies of modern history passed this way and through this mud”(narration, p. 69) and “The ground is the colour of steel”(narration, p.69) directly give the readers a image of the muddy ground. The ground works as an image of hell or underworld, as described in section four of Part Two: “[Robert] saw that the whole field was filled with floating shapes. The only sounds were the sounds of feeding and of wings. And of rafts.”(narration, p. 80) In this scene, corpses are all over the place on the ground, and the crows are eating on the dead soldier’s corpses. Findley uses this scene to show his
