The Reader and the Curtain: Eventfulness in “The Death of Dolgushov”

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of eventfulness in the short story “The Death of Dolgushov”, which is part of “Red Cavalry” by I.E. Babel’. Indirectly, through the form and structure of the story, a “mental event” is constructed — the epiphany of the protagonist, who has to face the catastrophic reality of the war and its inversed system of values. Such an effect is created through the binary composition of the story, the first part of it being fragmented and the second, on the contrary, solid. The protagonist “wanders” in the first part of the story and undergoes the event in the second one. The same event is created for the reader. As a result, the reader goes through an experience which is similar to the protagonist’s and has to face self-determination: this, according to V.I. Tjupa, is the “ethos of personal responsibility”. Some of the results of the analysis of the text are supported by the experiment which was carried out by the author of the article. The respondents who read “The Death of Dolgushov”, remember, understand and retell the second half of the story much better than the first one. The binary composition of the story made it possible for the readers to undergo the experience of “wandering” through the text and the subsequent realization of its meaning.