Entry Five

     Overall, I really enjoyed City of Thieves. It was the perfect balance between action and comedy. I think Kolya was my favorite character because he provided the comedy aspect of the novel. Even when he was dying he was making jokes to Lev and the people in the car. Also, he showed his maturity at the end of the novel when he was describing his book The Courtyard Hound. The title is because in the novel, a man won't leave his apartment. He hasn't left his apartment for several years. Than, one day, a dog shows up outside his window. Everyday he throws food down to the dog, and him and the dog establish a connection with each other. One day, he opens his window, and the dog is laying there dead. This makes him ponder whether or not to go outside and bury him because he knows no one else will. In the end, he leaves his apartment and cares for the dead dog.

    I think it is kind of similar to the connection that Lev has with Kolya, as if Lev was the confined man and Kolya was the dog, representing Lev's personality. Lev is a very shy and quiet person, and he hides like the man in the apartment. When Kolya (the dog) comes around, he slower comes out of his shell. He shows how he comes of age, which friendships, sex, humor, and maturity in general. Kolya's experiences with sex and his charisma help Lev mature because he constantly has to compete with Kolya around girls and other people. Vika is a character that shows Lev's growth throughout the novel because he isn't scared to talk to her or think about her. Also, she kisses him on the lips, and, in the last scene, she comes back to visit him.

    One word that I didn't know while reading this section was "bolshevik." The Bolshevik Party led the Russian Revolution, and was the only ruling party of the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik Party is mostly known as the Communist Party, which most people are more familiar with. In the novel, one of the Nazi commanders said, "You understand that Bolshevism is simply the most radical expression of the eternal Jewish quest for world domination" (Benioff 190). I think this is interesting because Bolshevism is associated with all of the USSR, not just the Jews. I think that this shows another example of how the Nazis blame everything on the Jews.

     My favorite part of the novel was when Lev was playing chess with Abendroth, the head of Einsatzgruppe A. Kolya set up the game by talking to the guards at the camp they were relocated. Abendroth was very very intelligent because he knew immediately that Lev was a Jew and Vika was a girl, but they had both disguised as white non-Jewish males. This shows the professionalism that the Nazis had and how much they focused on the details of their enemies. This scene was the main action scene in the novel, where Lev killed Abendroth and they killed the remaining guards. They jumped out of the window and escaped the camp. They didn't stop running until they were being shot at from the front. This is when Kolya gets shot in the butt, and they try to rush him to the hospital, but it is too late. Kolya died in the end of the novel, just like the courtyard hound.