Crossing into Poland
The Horror: A Reading of "Crossing into Poland" "I should wish to know where in the whole world you could find another father like my father?" The last line of Isaac Babel's short story "Crossing into Poland," turns the mood of the plot from another war story to a melancholic perception of the bloody horrors of the consequences of war. , A story that greatly shows the changing of one man's thoughts, and reality.The story's first person point of view ads even more of a personal touch to the story. In the opening paragraph the narrator describes the surroundings in great detail saying, "Fields flowered around us, crimson with poppies; a noon-tide breeze played in the yellowing rye; on the horizon virginal buckwheat rose like the wall of a distant monastery. The Volyn's peaceful stream moved away from us in sinuous curves and was lost in the pearly haze of the birch groves; crawling between flowery slopes, it wound weary arms through a wilderness of hops." In my mind the picture of the flowered fields with a grand monastery in the back is drawn to a perfect replica of the words. The mood however, transforms from describing the nice aspects of battle into a grotesque reality. When th
e narrator says, "Into the cool of evening dripped the smell of yesterday's blood, of slaughtered horses. It goes from just another war retelling into an atrocious reality. And then she says to him, "I should wish to know where in the whole world you could find another father like my father?" This line changes the whole story in my eyes. The woman goes on to tell of how her father begged not to be killed in front of his daughter, for she did not deserve to see it. Far on in the night we reached Novograd. A third, huddled to the wall with his head covered up, was already asleep. "Clear this up," I said to the woman. " The story now takes a uniquely turn into a strange reality. On the waves rested a majestic moon. Subsequently there is a vast description about a family the narrator meets along the way at his camp. " In the second paragraph its starts to tell of how the group is going into a camp crossing over broken bridges and traveling through rivers. Soon there after, the soldier falls asleep and has a disturbing dream. " Soon after the soldier looks to his right to see her father whose throat has been torn out and his face cut in two. " This dream opens up the eyes of the reader to the narrators mind, that in witch had been warped from the war.
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