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.
Character Analysis
Lev
At the start of the novel, Lev is young, naïve, and sexually inexperienced. Nonetheless, he has experienced far more than the average 17 year old. His father, a poet who expressed his political views too candidly, was taken away in 1937 and never returned. After this, Lev shows strength of character in standing up to his mother and asserting his wish to stay in Leningrad and defend the city against the Germans.
Lev longs to be a man and a hero figure, but he does not delude himself. He is flawed and loveable, demonstrating an admirable capacity for self-awareness and honesty. He openly admits to his weaknesses and shortcomings—for example, in Chapter 1 when he and his friends are caught looting, he is tempted to abandon Vera and save himself. Though he does choose the noble option and sacrifices himself, he is a somewhat reluctant hero.
Once imprisoned in the Crosses, Lev admits to being terrified and unable to live up to his ideal of heroism:
So many great Russians endured long stretches in prison. That night I learned I would never be a great Russian. A few hours alone in a cell, suffering no torture other than the darkness and the silence and the absolute cold, a few hours of that and I was already half broken (29-30).
Nonetheless, despite his lack of faith in himself, Lev demonstrates true strength and heroic qualities in his ability to endure the harshest of conditions while his and Kolya’s lives hang in the balance. Ultimately, he saves not only his own life but also Kolya’s and Vika’s. Furthermore, his lack of arrogance and honest admission of his true thoughts and feelings endear him to the reader and make him a sympathetic and multifaceted character with whom it is easy to empathize.
Kolya
While Lev cowers in the Crosses, Kolya breezes in arrogantly, showing no signs of the fear that has consumed his cellmate. He is handsome, charming, and talkative, and his outspoken comments provide the novel with an element of comedy. A scholar of literature who displays an air of intellectual superiority, Kolya is also a soldier who has been arrested on the charge of desertion, something he denies with great indignation.
Unlike Lev, Kolya is forthright, bold, and extremely proud, but his inability to hold his tongue puts both his own life at risk as well as Lev’s. For example, when the colonel offers them the chance to avoid execution by complying with his bizarre request, Kolya continues to push his luck with outspoken quips and retorts, incurring Lev’s silent anger:
Our lives had been returned in exchange for a simple task […] And now he was going to ruin it—he was asking for his bullet, which was bad, but he was asking for my bullet, too, which was far worse (53).
In Chapter 5, however, Kolya’s character gains more depth, as he risks his life to save Lev from the cannibals. It is here that both Lev and the reader see that Kolya is not merely a boastful charmer; he also possesses great strength, physical skill, and the ability to be selfless. From this point onward, the reader is given an increasingly positive view of Kolya as Lev’s admiration for him grows. We gain further insight in Chapter 17, when Lev realizes that Kolya does have a weak spot: He has lied about writing a novel because he fears criticism. Lev is entirely sympathetic, and their friendship deepens.
Lev eventually comments that “in four days [Kolya] had become my best friend” (270). Kolya’s tragic and wasteful death is therefore deeply moving for both Lev and the reader, as Lev realizes how much he loves his friend, even though they knew each other for less than a week.
Vika
We are introduced to Vika in Chapter 15, when the partisan group she belongs to storms the farmhouse. She shoots and kills six German officers, revealing a weapons proficiency that defies gendered stereotypes:
‘You’re a girl,’ Kolya blurted out, staring at her. I felt stupid for both of us.
‘Don’t look so shocked,’ said Korsakov. ‘She’s our best shot. Those Fritzes over there with half their heads? That’s because of her’ (220).
Despite her expertise with a rifle and her lack of conventional beauty, Lev is instantly and deeply attracted to this red-headed tomboy, and he soon falls in love. Vika has strong principles; she is willing to sacrifice her life for the cause against the Nazis, and she does not show emotions easily. She displays the fearlessness that Lev so admires in others and seeks to develop in himself, which may be why he is so attracted to her. Gradually, however, as Lev determines to get to know Vika, we see her softer side, and their parting in Chapter 24 is poignant and moving.
Vika was already featured as the narrator’s elderly grandmother in the novel’s Prologue. At that stage we did not know her name, but she was distinguished by her lack of culinary skills: “My grandmother doesn’t cook; she is famous in our family for her refusal to prepare anything more complicated than a bowl of cereal” (4). This seemingly insignificant line becomes crucially important at the end of the novel, when she and Lev reunite at the end of the war and we finally identify Vika as Lev’s future wife: “One thing you should know about me, Lyova. I don’t cook” (387).
Colonel Grechko
After their night in the Crosses, Lev and Kolya are taken to the colonel, who assigns them the bizarre mission to save themselves from execution by finding 12 eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake. The colonel comes across as a terrifying man who boasts about how many people he has personally executed. However, Lev notices that the colonel’s teeth are false, which suggests that he, like Lev’s father, may have been tortured. If this is true, the colonel has been “rehabilitated” and forced to join the NKVD. Lev wonders if the colonel “found it strange that he had been so close to the shark’s jaws and somehow fought his way back to shore, that he who had waited for another’s mercy could now decide for himself whether to grant it” (51).
At the end of the novel, when Lev delivers the eggs, we are given a more positive view of the colonel. He is genuinely sympathetic over Kolya’s death and very generous in giving Lev two Grade One ration cards. The advice he gives Lev about keeping quiet also hints at the colonel’s own struggle to survive.
