My First Goose by Isaac Babel is a short story that delves into themes of alienation, camaraderie, and the clash between intellect and military culture.
One of the finest prose writers in Russian literature, Isaac Babel was a Russian-Jewish author, journalist, and playwright who lived through the Bolshevik Revolution. His two collections of short stories, astounding in their literary quality, did not portray the ‘socialist realism’ that was mandated by the totalitarian Stalin government in the Soviet Union at the time. His best-known collection, “Red Cavalry” fictionalizes his own experience in the First Cavalry during the Polish-Soviet War. His accounts of the war describe its horrific brutalities while drawing simultaneous contrasts with ordinary objects of extraordinary beauty in everyday life, not glorifying it through state and military propaganda as the government required. The ambiguity of his political views and lack of openly supporting the communist government led to his arrest in 1939 on false charges of terrorism and espionage, imprisonment, and finally his execution on 27th January 1940.
My First Goose | Summary
The story is narrated by a first-person narrator, beginning with the use of the literary device in media res. It begins with the narrator reporting to the Commander of the Sixth Division of the First Cavalry, Savitsky, upon joining the army. The commander is dressed impressively, and the narrator is surprised to see the ‘beauty of his gigantic body’. The Commander smiles at him menacingly, and, cracking his whip on the table, reads out an order for a soldier named Ivan Chesnokov, to march to Chugunov-Dobryvodka with his regiment, and destroy the enemy immediately upon encountering. He then writes to Chesnokov that noncompliance to the order will result in his immediate execution at gunpoint, darkening the tone of the story considerably.
As he hands over the order to the subordinate staff, the narrator hands him the documents regarding his assignment and posting. Looking at his frail, scholarly, and bespectacled physique, the commander asks his officers in a disparaging tone to put the narrator up for ‘all sorts of amusements’ except sending him to the battlefield. He then asks mockingly if the narrator can read and write, to which he replies yes, having a degree in law from the University of St. Petersburg. This information earns him further mockery of his physical frailty and a perceived psychological one commonly attributed to the intelligentsia, and the commander asks if he will be able to survive among the troops. The narrator confidently replies that he will.
He is sent off to the quartermaster i.e., a regimental officer responsible for arranging barracks and assigning places for soldiers to live, in order to find a place to stay. Reaching a barrack, the quartermaster stops and warns him about the subsequent teasing and bullying that will result from his spectacles, noting that the soldiers have no taste for a distinguished, educated gentleman, but love those who have molested or seduced a lady. He is assigned a barrack with Cossack soldiers, who are members of an ethnic group of Ukraine and Southern Russia, primarily Orthodox Christians and known for their military abilities. As they enter the barrack, the quartermaster announces to the soldiers that the narrator has been ordered by Commander Savitsky to stay with them, ordering them not to harass him because of his education and evident lack of martial experience and aptitude. His orders are immediately ignored as he leaves, and a young Cossack with flaxen hair throws out the narrator’s suitcase without provocation or warning and begins making vulgar sounds at him, the others laughing at the spectacle.
Not choosing a confrontation, the narrator meekly goes and gathers his things in his broken suitcase, carrying it to the other end of the yard to keep it away from his barrack-mates. He spies a hut close by, with a pot of boiling pork in front, luring the hungry and lonely narrator. Using his suitcase as a pillow, he lies down, reading Lenin’s speech at the Second Congress of the Comintern, while his fellow soldiers continue to make fun of him. Hungry, he goes over to the hut and asks an old lady for some food. The half-blind lady looks at him, and in a reply shocking both him and the reader, says that ‘all this makes me want to hang myself’. Irritated, the narrator shoves her back with his arms in an unnecessary display of aggression.
As he spots a cavalry sword left by some soldier there, he sees a ‘haughty goose’ nearby, calmly grooming its feathers. In a shocking display of violent brutality, the narrator grabs the goose and kills it, crushing its head under his boots. Picking the dead bird up with the tip of his sword, he asks the old woman to roast it for him, who complies with a repetition of her suicidal intent from earlier. Looking back, he sees that none of his fellow Cossacks appear to have seen the goose, and kept their eyes away, stiffly eating their meal. One of them comments that the narrator will fit in well enough. Anguished and remorseful at his own actions, the narrator cleans his sword as one of the Cossacks calls him, asking him to join them in their meal till his goose is ready. The atmosphere of hostility towards him has changed evidently. As the one who harassed him earlier asks the narrator about what is written in the papers these days, he reads out Lenin’s speech triumphantly, realizing that he has passed the test of acceptance. At night they sleep with their legs ‘tangled’, ‘warming each other’. As he dreams of women, his guilty and sensitive heart cries murder, lamenting the loss of his innocence.
My First Goose | Analysis
The story is one of the greatest ones Babel has ever written, including his signature style of contrasting the grim realities of war with beauty and moments of tenderness and happiness in everyday life. The story often uses highly erotic language to describe men, first observed in the strikingly sensual and detailed physical description of Commander Savitsky, charged with homoeroticism. This homoerotic undertone is repeated in the concluding paragraph when the narrator describes six soldiers, including him, sleeping together, ‘warming each other’, their ‘legs tangled’. The sexual undertone is unmistakable. The homoerotic element can be a result of the war which denies soldiers female company for long durations, often resulting in the expression of repressed sexual tension that is directed towards his fellow men instead.
The narrator is identified in the other stories of this collection as Kiril Lyutov, and works as a propagandist in the army, as Babel himself did during his time serving the military. The mockery of educated people is a reflection of the totalitarian hatred for the intelligentsia who, with their learning and information, may pose a threat to the government’s dominantly constructed ideology. It also reflects a culture of toxic masculinity that does not perceive an evident lack of physical strength and brutishness as manly enough, glorifying the act of seducing or raping a woman as proof of manliness and virility.
The narrator does not appear to have the courage to confront his barrack-mates for mistreating him. Instead, he takes out his frustration on innocents, being unnecessarily aggressive towards the old woman and mercilessly slaughtering the goose in a disgustingly cold and cruel manner. He knows that violence is the only rite of passage in an army during wartime, and he does not take time to prove to his fellow soldiers that he is as capable of brutality as they are. The goose is also a symbol of the innocent civilian lives that as slaughtered in war, written off as collateral damage necessary to achieve victory. There is also a sharp contrast in the initial portrayals of the village hut with an old woman sewing, a pot of food boiling in front, and the goose calmly grooming itself, and with the subsequent violence of the scene. Both the images have an idyllic, pastoral quality about them, which is immediately negated by the old woman’s shockingly direct suicidal declaration, and the violent slaughter of the goose, bringing out the contrast between realities of everyday life and the brutality of war, a style that is Babel’s signature.
Lastly, the story also portrays the workings of a totalitarian communist regime very discreetly. Not addressing it directly as he would be immediately arrested for opposing the government, Babel shows his readers how propaganda functions in keeping such regimes functions, fictionalizing truth according to their whims.
My First Goose | Themes
War –The violent realities of war occupy a central position in the story, transforming sensitive, gentle men into aggressive, beastly soldiers, and innocent civilian bystanders into depressed and disturbed individuals who are either suicidal or sacrifice of the war.
Masculinity – The theme of masculinity is intrinsically involved in the glorification of the war narrative, deeming aggression and physical strength as proof of manliness and virility while negating all forms of gentleness and learning, which are associated with physical weakness.
Violence – Evidently in a story about war, we witness shocking extents of violence and brutality directed at an innocent, voiceless creature, the goose, who becomes a symbol of the thousands of innocent casualties of war.
My First Goose | Characters:
The Narrator – The narrator, Kiril Lyutov is part of the university-educated intelligentsia who are compelled to serve the army for specified tenures. He is gentle, sensitive, and physically frail, earning him the mockery of the soldiers around him, as well as his Commander. He is not courageous enough to oppose his own harassment and chooses to violently slaughter an innocent goose in order to prove his mettle to his fellow soldiers, who accept him immediately. Though enjoying his camaraderie with others, the guilt of murdering the goose mercilessly nevertheless continues to haunt him.
Commander Savitsky – The commander, gigantic and impressive, appears frighteningly cruel in his only appearance in the story, capable of killing others in an instant while evidently enjoying the display of violence, as is observed in his manner and body language of serving the order to Chesnokov.
The Quartermaster– The quartermaster appears more sympathetic and supportive than the rest of the soldiers, warning the narrator about the treatment about to come his way. While he orders that the narrator is not harassed, he does not make any additional effort to ensure that he is safe.
The Old Woman– The old woman who is the mistress of the house is partially blind, and extremely depressed by the display of violence that unfolds around her every day, and is suicidal as a result of it, helpless as innocents are butchered in front of her eyes.
