Selfless Or Selflessness In City Of Thieves By David Benioff

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Recommended: Political, economic and social effects of world war2

Selfless or Selfish The book City Of Thieves, by David Benioff, is about two young men during the Siege of Leningrad. It is 1941 and Lev and Kolya the main characters of the book have been have been arrested by the NKVD; Lev was arrested for looting a dead German, and Kolya was arrested for leaving his unit of the Red Army. They are given a chance to earn their freedom. This job entails finding a dozen eggs for a colonel's daughters wedding. To Lev and Kolya, this task seems almost impossible in the city of Leningrad where most people haven't eaten a real meal in weeks. Lev and Kolya explore in and outside the city’s boundaries trying to find eggs, witnessing many horrific events. Through this story, Benioff brings to light how people respond to war differently, but in the end war shows how selfish or selfless one is. In the novel, Benioff explores how people can be selfish or selfless through the colonel and cannibals exploiting the effects of war to benefit themselves, while Kolya would risk …show more content…

After Lev and Kolya leave Leningrad and journey towards Mga, they run across a farmhouse with some young women inside. While conversing with their girls, they learn more about how vulgarly the germans treated the young women. The behavior of the Germans disgusts Kolya, and he decides he want to wait them out and jump them. When waiting for the Germans to arrive, Kolya gives a pep talk: ¨Keep thinking about her when you stick the knife in his gut”(Benioff 135). Protecting the girls from the einsatzgruppen meant a lot to Kolya. The plan he makes to defeat the einsatzgruppen is perilous, he might be going up against six trained Nazi’s with one gun and Lev with a knife. This battle is going to be next to impossible and Kolya knows that, he also knows what will happen to Lev, the girls and himself if he fails. Kolya seems to not care if he dies, he would rather die trying to fix what is

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