82 pages • 2 hours read
David BenioffCity of Thieves
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Food
The novel is littered with vivid, sensual images of food that function both literally and metaphorically. The novel’s dramatic opening immediately emphasizes the suffering caused by hunger, cold, and exhaustion:
You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold. When we slept, if we slept, we dreamed of the feasts we had carelessly eaten seven months earlier—all that buttered bread, the potato dumplings, the sausages—eaten with disregard, swallowing without tasting, leaving great crumbs on our plates, scraps of fat (9).
On a literal level, Lev and his friends are desperately hungry and craving any morsel of food they can find; metaphorically, the intense cravings also convey their extreme deprivation on every level, physical, emotional, and sexual. The feeling of being satisfied, whether through food, sex, or other comforts, is a distant memory:
Fish soup. I hadn’t had fish soup since summer. The idea of it was wild and exotic, like a naked girl on a Pacific island (48).
Throughout the novel images of food are conveyed in such rich and scintillating detail so that readers can empathize with the extreme hunger and deprivation experienced by the characters. We are not merely witnessing their suffering and their cravings, we are experiencing it with them. We also share their sensual delight when small and short-lived pleasures come their way:
Borya returned with four slices of toast on a blue plate. The toast had been slathered in something oily, lard maybe, glistening and fatty and luscious (55).
Phallic Symbols
The novel often uses phallic symbols to represent Lev’s desire to become a man and a hero. In particular, images of weapons often represent not just literal military power but also sexual and egotistical power. During the looting scene, Lev removes a knife from the body of the German soldier; possessing the knife gives him a powerful sense of manhood and power:
I found a sheath strapped to the pilot’s ankle and pulled out a beautifully weighted knife with a silver finger guard and a fifteen-centimeter single-edge blade […] I resheathed the blade and strapped it to my own ankle, feeling for the first time in months that my warrior destiny was at last coming true (20).
Conversely, phallic symbols also represent Lev’s feelings of impotence in the face of others’ power. The colonel, for example, is quick to link sexual prowess with oppressive actions such as carrying out executions:
‘Listen, boy, do you know how many people I’ve executed? I don’t mean on my orders, I mean done it myself, with this Tokarev—’ Here he slapped the holstered pistol. […] ‘I’ve lost count. And I’m the kind of man who likes to know. I keep track of things. I know exactly how many women I’ve fucked, and it’s quite a few, believe me’ (45).
In the space of a few moments he moves from boasting about how many people he has killed to boasting about his sexual conquests. Both forms of boasting are intended to inflate his own sense of power, while the image of his gun has both literal and metaphorical meanings.
Eggs
Eggs represent nourishment and life—specifically, new life and new beginnings. They are often associated with spring and Easter, and are therefore linked to resurrection and miracles.
Though Lev and Kolya’s experience is far from joyful—even if they find the eggs, they remain in a harrowing situation in Leningrad—they will nonetheless escape execution and gain a second chance at life if they succeed. They experience two incredulous miracles, one in being offered the quest, and another in managing to obtain 12 eggs in an area ravaged by deprivation and starvation.
The eggs also represent luxury and the divide between the rich and the poor. While ordinary people are eating glue to survive, the colonel’s wife and daughter are planning a lavish wedding and insist on having a cake.
By centering the story on Lev and Kolya’s quest to save their lives by finding a dozen eggs for the colonel, the author explores and develops some of the novel’s themes, such as the oppressive power of authorities, the vulnerability of ordinary people, and the behavior of people in extreme wartime circumstances. Lev and Kolya’s journey as they search for eggs brings them face-to-face with cannibalism, a dying boy and his rooster, dogs used as bombs, young girls forced into prostitution for Nazi officers, the activities of Russian partisans, and the horrific execution of some of Russia’s literate men.
The quest also gives Lev the opportunity to mature into an adult, to live out his dream to become a warrior-hero. In the course of a few days, we see him develop from a frightened teenage boy, paralyzed by fear, to a young adult who has fallen in love, witnessed horrific violence and profound suffering, and saved his friends by killing two German officers.
Character Foils
The contrasting dynamics between Lev and Kolya help develop the novel’s main themes and bring tension and humor to the novel. They are two people who would probably not have chosen to be friends in ordinary circumstances, and the differences between them provide the author with plenty of scope to explore different personality types, different notions of heroic behavior, and different ways of reacting to oppression and hardship.
Though Lev and Kolya are very different, there is something admirable both in Lev’s careful, considered approach and in Kolya’s boldness and refusal to submit to oppression. When they are taken out of the Crosses and transported to the colonel’s headquarters, Lev is obedient and wishes to preserve his own life: “I didn’t want to do anything to anger the guards. Our escape from the Crosses seemed like an odd mistake and I expected to be shoved inside again if I did something wrong” (38-39). Kolya, meanwhile, is bold, assertive, and likeable, but he lacks Lev’s self-control. Readers may find themselves agreeing with the colonel’s opinion of Kolya: “I like you, boy. You won’t live a long life, but I like you” (54).
