Saturday, December 6, 2014

Baby Pétya

I was really interested in Pétya's death. First of all, I think that it was definitely necessary for a number of reasons. Aminata, I think it was you who was so fond of Pétya and who said in class that you still saw him as a baby. I'm positive that Tolstoy was manipulating us to think that way. I mean, Nicholas was 16 when he first went into battle and he wasn't portrayed that way to nearly the same extent. Here we have Pétya literally submerged in his own "fairy kingdom," conducting orchestras in his head and being not physically able to contain his feelings of love for men not that much older than him. He is completely a rosy-cheeked baby, who is meant to tug on the readers' heart strings. So why did he have to die? I think that Tolstoy wants to show us that war can be the worst. All throughout the book he's been making it out to be terribly exciting with all the battles and adrenaline rushes. Pierre wants to become a soldier because he wants to be part of something big and Nicholas and Andrew both wanted glory. The best way obviously to obtain these things is through killing each other on a battle field. So now the truth comes out and a young, innocent boy gets too excited to be part of something/prove himself and he dies. I think that this shows that war can be cruel and that it can hurt everyone, not just men. Now we're about to read about the Rostov's grief and (unless I'm mistaken) this will be the first time we see a family grieve for a loss sustained during battle. Already we've seen Denisov bury Pétya in a flower patch. I'm not going to lie, that almost evoked some tears.
What do you guys think? Is Tolstoy about to give us another perspective on war?

5 comments:

  1. We have gotten to see a lot of aspects of war especially military ones when the generals are making plans, putting them into place, men charging and attacking each other and then receiving medals for it- it is all so theatrical and grand. Pétya's death is the best illustration of war leading to senseless death on the battle field to evoke emotions in the reader as Pétya is relatable- he could be anybody's little brother.

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  2. I totally agree with Aminata. I think that Petya has never grown up and for this reason he is extra susceptible to the dangers of war. He is also a lot less important, plot wise, compared to his brother, and so to prove his point, Petya was an easy character for Tolstoy to use.

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  3. I think that Tolstoy was also trying to show that although young men volunteered to be in the army as an act of patriotism even if they were underage, war is not always glorious. It reminds me of a poem by Wilfred Owen (WW1 poet) and the latin phrase "Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori", which means "it is noble and glorious to die for your country. "Dulce et decorum est" is a poem by Owen that talks about how this old adage is a lie, and shouldn't be spoken so lightly.

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  4. Interesting. I think Tolstoy is definitely bringing another aspect of war (the part which no one wants to look--part about death) in a series of characters. Tolstoy does elude to war's horrors early in the novel in which Nicholas visits Denisov to deliver his petition to the emperor with a young soldier die. This horror continues to grow as we readers see the death of Andrew and Kataraev. This horror climaxes with Petya's death; a young, innocent child dies because of some fools' folly.

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  5. I think it's interesting that Petya was not developed much as a character prior to the very end of the novel, right before his death. I wonder if it was always Tolstoy's plan to kill off Petya in this way. I also think part of the purpose is to show how glorified war was for the young men in Russia like Petya, how they were inspired by stories of glory to join the war effort and then they were killed.

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