The Story of My Dovecote_ppt 2.pd f

1. Vridhi Jain
(21/456)
The Story of My Dovecote (1925)
by Issac Babel
(1894-1940)

2. Historical Background
Narrative Structure
Characters
Thematic Exploration
Conclusion
CONTENTS

3. HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
Russian Revolution of 1905
Anti-Jewish riots

4. Narrative Structure
Elements fiction and
autobiography
Childhood and history
Tale of tragedy and loss

5. Characters
“As a child I very much wanted to own a dovecote. In all
my life I have never experienced such a strong desire.”
“What a nation! The devil is in these Yids!”
“But my father was too trusting of others, he offended
people with his exhilarating welcome of first love.”
“Shoyl also differed from ordinary folk in the lying stories
he used to tell about the Polish Rising of 1861.”
“My mother was pale, she was trying to foresee my fate in my eyes...she
was the only one who fully realized how luckless our family was.”
“And this clean, childish feeling of ownership of new things infected my mother too.”

6. Biblical Allusions
Thematic Exploration
Childhood and Memory
History and Culture
Violence Home and Safety

7. My world was small and ugly. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see it, and pressed myself against
the earth that lay soothing and mute beneath me. This tamped earth did not resemble
anything in our lives. Somewhere far away disaster rode across it on a large horse, but the
sound of its hooves grew weaker and vanished, and silence, the bitter silence that can descend
on children in times of misfortune, dissolved the boundary between my body and the unmoving
earth.

8. Bibliography
Lieber, Emma. “‘WHERE IS THE SWEET
REVOLUTION?’: A RECONSIDERATION OF GOGOL
AND BABEL.” The Slavic and East European
Journal, vol. 53, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–18.
BAR-YOSEF, HAMUTAL, and Ilana Gomel.
“On Isaac Babel’s ‘The Story of My Dovecot.’”
Prooftexts, vol. 6, no. 3, 1986, pp. 264–71.