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Jessica Jimenez
Babel’s “My First Goose” and Fiction Elements
10/22/18
ENGL 1302
The narrator is unnamed, I would describe the narrators voice as being a very confident
individual and not scared of anyone. Narrators relationship to the story is he is appointed Staff of
Division he’s an individual out there trying to prove people wrong about himself. Story takes
place during the civil war which began in Russia in a village to join the Cossack division to
which he has been assigned. The people (soldiers) start mocking him to the point where he wants
to prove them wrong. The narrator knows he must win them over in order to educate them on
Leninism and to impress them, he kills a goose violently. As an emotional Jew he just wanted
justice. My impression of the character is baffling as I do not know why he goes that far as to kill
a goose to gruesomely. As his story ends with “heart, stained with bloodshed, grated and
brimmed over”. I believe the language is formal, there is a lot of figurative language. Major
details are narrators’ explanations on how he kills the goose to prove the soldiers wrong for
mocking him. The narrator’s attitude towards the Cossack Commander S. seems to be one of the
irrational adorations as he simply wants to succeed as a propaganda officer. The ritual of the
sacrifice had a point made that the narrator had and that there will be other such sacrificial
offerings and other victims of the war and revolution.
One of the most interesting themes in this story is the ambivalent character of the mutual
relationship between the intellectual and the primitive man (whether peasant, “noble savage,” or
Cossack). The intellectuality of the narrator is stressed; he has a law degree; he wears glasses;
the quartermaster tells him that there is “no life for the brainy type here” and suggests that he
will not get on with the troops unless he “mess[es] up a lady”—that is, commits rape. Only when
he has symbolically raped the goose (and its owner, also symbolically) is the new officer
accepted—and then the soldiers are able to admit that they need him for his ability to read out
and explain the truth. Their contempt has changed to respect, but the reader understands that
these attitudes will continually alternate.
The narrator’s attitude toward the Cossack Commander Savitsky seems to be one of almost
irrational adoration; his desire to get on with the soldiers is more than simply a matter of wanting
to succeed as a propaganda officer. He admires the primitive innocence of these men even as he
is appalled by their vulgarity and cruelty. This ambivalence remains constant throughout the Red
Cavalry stories.
