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.
Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
A peaceful few hours’ sleep at the partisans’ safe house is interrupted dramatically as the guard on patrol announces that the Germans are coming. They run through the woods and snow, and Lev witnesses the death of Korsakov and other partisans. After running for 20 minutes and hiding behind a tree, he is overcome to see Kolya, Vika, and another partisan called Markov coming toward him.
The relief is short-lived when they see a whole company of German soldiers, the Gebirgsjäger, coming their way, marching scores of Russian prisoners. Knowing they cannot hide, they distract the Germans with a grenade and then infiltrate the group of Russian prisoners. Unfortunately, one of the prisoners recognizes Markov as a partisan who recently stole food from him. He denounces him to the Germans, and Markov is shot dead. Lev, Kolya, and Vika stoically carry on, having blended into the group of prisoners without being noticed.
Chapter 20 Summary
The prisoners are taken to an old Bolshevik schoolhouse, now inhabited by the Nazis. Given a newspaper each, they are told that those who can read one paragraph will be given comfortable office jobs and three meals a day, while the illiterate will be sent to the steel mills in Estonia. Vika whispers to Lev to pretend that he cannot read; Kolya also understands, and all three convince the Nazi officer that they are illiterate. The 57 men who have passed the literacy test are marched away, proud of themselves and unaware of their fate. They are lined up and shot with machine guns in front of the other prisoners.
Chapter 21 Summary
Following the mass execution, Lev, Kolya, Vika, and the remaining prisoners are crammed into a small tool shed for the night, where Lev is forced to sleep sitting up for lack of space. Despite the terrible situation they are in, Lev enjoys the opportunity to be close to Vika, who falls asleep leaning on his shoulder.
Chapters 19-21 Analysis
This section brings Lev and Kolya’s first direct encounters with the inhumane cruelty of the Nazi regime, though the author is careful to remind us—through the presence of the old Bolshevik school building—that Russian history is also stained with bloodshed. Chapter 19 features Lev and Kolya’s most dramatic episode so far, as Lev comments, “Real terror—the genuine belief that your life is about to end violently—erases everything but itself from the brain” (269). Though they are traumatized and morale is low after the death of several comrades, Lev, Kolya, and Vika all display tremendous self-control and stoicism as they continue marching with the prisoners. It is also at this point that Lev and Vika form a bond with each other, which echoes the cannibal episode in Chapters 5 and 6, in which the shared experience of trauma brought Lev and Kolya together.
Arrival at the old schoolhouse brings the most chilling scene, as the Nazis’ sickening trick to execute the literate and intelligent men sees more than half the prisoners unknowingly march to their death, proudly thinking they will serve their time in a comfortable existence. The author’s stark understatement gives the scene a more dramatic impact and emphasizes the lack of emotion in the Nazi officers who simply resume their daily tasks after the execution.
