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82 pages 2 hours read

David Benioff

City of Thieves

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008

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Themes

The Transition from Boy to Man

As a coming-of-age story about a teenage boy, the novel particularly focuses on the transition from boy to man and the nature of manhood. Lev frequently expresses his desire to conform to traditional social norms, particularly the culture of the warrior-hero, a desire that has been exacerbated by the presence of war and the threat of attack. Lev reveals that his desire to embody the warrior-hero’s traits and virtues has altered his relationship with his mother, causing him to assert himself and splinter the family unit:

The night before [my mother and sister] left I fought with my mother, the only fight we’d ever had—or, more precisely, the only time I ever fought back. She wanted me to go with them […] But I wasn’t leaving Piter. I was a man. I would defend my city, I would be a Nevsky for the twentieth century (11-12).

Lev’s domestic role in the family unit is therefore overthrown by his need to adopt a new role of man/hero and serve his community on a grand scale: “I was seventeen, flooded with a belief in my own heroic destiny” (13). He wishes to be a member of society rather than just a member of a family, and he regards his rebellion against his mother as his first step to manhood.

However, Lev’s overenthusiastic desire to be a hero is founded on an inferiority complex, and he frequently measures himself against Kolya, who he perceives as truly confident and heroic. Lev struggles with feelings of sexual jealousy and inferiority, and he is overcome with fear when he is overpowered by the authorities, for example, when he is arrested for looting at the beginning of the novel. Moments like this remind readers that Lev is still just a teenage boy struggling to become a man amid terrifying circumstances.

Lev continually analyzes the nature of fear, and he is extremely hard on himself; he has created an idealistic heroic image in his mind and torments himself whenever he fails to live up to his own expectations by acting in cowardice. Chapter 15, when Lev and Kolya lie in wait for the Germans at the farmhouse, is particularly significant, as Lev silently analyses himself and his understanding of heroic behavior and fear:

This is all very strange, I thought. I am in the middle of a battle and I am aware of my own thoughts, I am worried about how stupid I look with a knife in my hand while everyone else came to fight with rifles and machine guns. I am aware that I am aware […] Heroes and fast sleepers, then, can switch off their thoughts when necessary. Cowards and insomniacs, my people, are plagued by babble on the brain (210; 215).

The moment in Chapter 23, when Lev kills Abendroth and another German soldier, serves as the tipping point in his transition from teenager to adult. This scene is significant not only because Lev successfully acts on brave instinct, saving Kolya and Vika’s lives in the process, but because he finally perceives the heroism in his own actions: “I had acted, against all expectation, against my own history of cowardice” (352). That Lev joins the army at the end of the novel brings his narrative arc full circle: He began as a boy who dreamed of serving his city as a hero, and he ends the novel as a young man who has realized that deepest desire.

War and Survival

Another theme lies in how war changes people’s values and behavior, especially the lengths people will go to to survive. There are various examples of people doing things they would previously have found abhorrent, such as eating their own pets in the absence of any other food source. Lev comments on how the “shock factor” of such behavior soon disappears, and readers are encouraged not to judge but to imagine themselves in the same situation:

You would hear a rumor in October that someone had roasted the family mutt and split it four ways for supper; we’d laugh and shake our heads, not believing it […] By January the rumors had become plain fact. No one but the best connected could still feed a pet, so the pets fed us (10).

The novel asks us to consider what happens in extreme circumstances, when basic survival is under threat: Do people care for and protect each other, or do they go to extreme lengths to save themselves? How would we behave in these desperate circumstances? When Vera slips and falls while trying to evade capture, Lev admits that it crosses his mind to keep running and leave her behind. His conscience gets the better of him and he goes back to help her, but the favor is not returned. As the soldiers seize him, Vera runs to safety without turning back. Do we condemn her for this, or would we do the same? Is Lev’s (albeit reluctant) sacrifice even more admirable when contrasted with Vera’s cowardice?

The novel takes a well-known historical event—the siege of Leningrad during World War II—and brings it to life by exploring its harrowing and devastating effects on the lives of ordinary people. The citizens of Leningrad experience poverty and starvation to an extreme degree, along with a constant fear of attack and annihilation, and an acute awareness of their vulnerability and powerlessness.

Yet City of Thieves is by no means one-sided, for both the Russian and German regimes are shown to be equally oppressive and cruel, with each demonstrating a contemptuous disregard for human life. This is not just the story of the Nazi siege but also of 20th-century post-revolutionary Russia, and there is no simplistic good-versus-evil lesson to be learned. The novel shows that life in Leningrad was tough and oppressive long before the Nazis arrived, most notably when Lev tells us that his poet father was taken away and allegedly murdered, not by the Germans but by Russian authorities.

City of Thieves also explores the possibility that the colonel may have been tortured in the past by the NKVD but, unlike Lev’s father, given a second chance through “rehabilitation” and the opportunity to join the ranks of the oppressors. The novel therefore suggests that this seemingly powerful man has also been bullied and may not be acting entirely of his own free will. Once again, the divide between oppressor and victim is complicated, and readers are encouraged to consider feeling sympathy for the colonel. His actions are condemnable, but even he is caught in a complex web of power games. Through this character and all the others, the novel questions whether anyone is wholly guilty or wholly innocent in such extreme circumstances.

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