“Comrade,” she said, after a short silence. “All of this makes me want to hang myself?”
Babel maneuvers the reader towards his emotional center and aesthetic consciousness. His psychological subjugation is temporarily relieved: “Savitsky, the commander of the Sixth Division, rose when he saw me, and I was taken aback by the beauty of his gigantic body. […]. He smelled of perfume and the nauseating coolness of soap” (66). The young journalist illustrates the need for acceptance, and the necessity to diminish the ridicule by the Cossacks with disdain and aggression: when a village woman refuses his order to prepare him a meal, he arbitrarily kills a goose by stepping on its neck. Babel reveals to the reader that he is “oppressed” by the repetition of their criminal acts and fighting strategy: “hack to pieces.” And seeing wounded men eating in ditches, dead bodies covering the fields, and more importantly, lost friendship.
Edith
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