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 the narrator says, "Into the cool of evening dripped the smell of yesterday's blood, of slaughtered horses."
             The story then goes on to explain how the narrator is a soldier in a platoon during World War II, and with help form the title it seems as if almost that platoon is "crossing into Poland." 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. "The bridges were down, and we waded across the river. On the waves rested a majestic moon. The horses were in to the cruppers, and the noisy torrent gurgled among hundreds of horses' legs. Somebody sank,
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Crossing into Poland . (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 03:31, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/65499.html