Atlantic Narratives Part 60

8. Comment on the aptness of the t.i.tle.

BABANCHIK

CHRISTINA KRYSTO lived the first nine years of her life, from 1887 to 1896, in Russia. She then came with her father's family to America, settling on a ranch. Her vocation is ranch-work; her avocation is writing. Miss Krysto's _The Mother of Stasya_ is published in the June (1918) _Atlantic_.

An Armenian, a Revolutionist, a voluntary exile, desiring in his old age nothing so much as the privilege of serving Russia, whose government, inst.i.tutions, and rulers he had fought all his seventy years--such is Babanchik. Russia had driven his twenty-year-old daughter into an exile of hard labor, had imprisoned his son for the best ten years of his life; and Babanchik died because his strength was too weak to carry him back to serve her. Shall you call it patriotism in a man who cursed his native land with a hymn of everlasting hate? racial instinct in one whose Armenian birth made him an object of official suspicion? Here there could be no overpowering conviction that his country's civilization must be protected against the dreaded Kultur. Yet the desire comes--not only his own, but the command of his imprisoned son, that he serve Russia.

There are other beautiful things in Christina Krysto's story, not the least of which are the suggestive bits of description of the life in the Georgian village. Yet Babanchik, of the caressing name, product of that strange country whose people grow more incomprehensible as the Great War progresses, interesting as he is, directing the summer play in the Caucasian Mountains, is a thousand times more wonderful when swayed by the unnamed power that returns him dead to Russia.

_Suggested Points for Study and Comment_

1. What are the characteristics in Babanchik that make him a favorite with the children?

2. Contrast the Babanchik who played with the children with the Babanchik who talked with the father.

3. What were Babanchik's most serious interests?

4. What circ.u.mstances of his birth hampered his influence with the Russian government?

5. How was his ambition to become a member of the city Duma crushed?

6. In spite of government intervention, what were some of the beneficial influences which Babanchik found that he could exert?

7. What was there in the government of Russia that was particularly distasteful to a man of Babanchik's nature?

8. What strong traits of Babanchik are brought out in that long furious fight for his children in the Russian prison?

9. What effect did the war have upon Babanchik's view of Russia?

10. What hastened the old man's desire to return?

11. Comment upon the author's artistic close.

ROSITA

ELLEN MACKUBIN was, several years ago, a frequent contributor to the _Atlantic_. Nearly all her stories are tinged with the military spirit with which she was thoroughly familiar.

The cause of the deed is never revealed to the garrison; its consequences can only be surmised. Indeed the true standing of the affair as tragedy is only guessed. The instigator of the quarrel between Major Prior and Jerry Breton, the perpetrator, and the victim of the tragedy unite in the person of one christianized just enough to suffer for the savage instincts she had never learned to control. We see her just once, Rosita, the beautiful, the impulsive, the pa.s.sionate; the next time she is dead. It is the feeling of repressed power that makes Ellen Mackubin's story grip the attention. In a few short pages, three--possibly four--characters are made to live, and a tragedy wrecks two lives.

_Suggested Points for Study and Comment_

1. Discuss which of the common elements of story--setting, plot, character, theme, or style--is here most prominent.

2. Discuss the way in which the separate characters are introduced and the complication arranged.

3. How can Jerry's treatment of the commanding officer on the day of the dress parade be condoned?

4. How does the reader feel regarding Rosita's vague declaration that she will rid Jerry of Prior's unfairness?

5. On the night of the shooting, what motive prompted Jerry to fling the pistol far over the edge of the bluff?

6. Describe the effects which the tragedy produced upon the garrison.

7. What were Jerry's feelings during the days immediately succeeding the tragedy?

8. How does the reader decide the question as to who is the really guilty person?

PERJURED

EDITH RONALD MIRRIELEES is a member of the English Department of Leland Stanford Junior University.

It was a useless lie. Robbins knew that, as soon as he had spoken it.

But it stopped the boys' teasing. Once spoken, events followed in too rapid succession for him to do more than qualify his statement; the bald accusation remained. Repet.i.tion had done more than confirm the story in Sutro; it had benumbed Robbins's own sense of exactness. His reputation for truth constantly confronted him; sometimes it made it easier for him, but increasingly often he saw the difficulty of reconciling the lie with himself. On the other hand, time and self-torture strengthened the conviction that truth must prevail and that no innocent man could suffer by the law. And so it proved. Robbins, the boy who had tried to save himself from momentary discomfiture, who had deliberately placed a man in direct accusation for murder, found himself, not a self-righteous person who by a last act of grace redeems the innocent and places himself on a martyr's pedestal; instead, he found himself a perjured youth, no better than the truck-gardener Emerson in whom truth itself lost credence.

That a malignant fate had placed the name of the guilty man in the boy's mouth, comes with no shock; the author has so carefully prepared our minds for that very verdict, that we are merely surprised that we could have forgotten the bits of telling evidence. The interest begins and ends with a boy of sixteen who in weakness was forsworn.

_Suggested Points for Study and Comment_

1. Comment on the appropriateness of the direct opening. Is such a method more appropriate to one type of story than another?

2. Describe the steps by which the author prepares for, without explaining, his climax.

3. How does the author focus attention, not on the murderer and criminal, but on the individual problem of Robbins? Would you have preferred a more detailed explanation of the cause of the crime?

4. Why is Emerson introduced?

5. Is the enormity of the injury he is doing ever clear to Robbins?

6. What other stories are included, but left untold, in this one?

7. What, to you, is the most significant thing in the author's handling of the narrative? Why would such a story not lend itself to scenic production?

WHAT MR. GREY SAID

MARGARET PRESCOTT MONTAGUE, living among the West Virginia mountains, has written many successful stories of the Hill people whom she knows so well.

To make of the little blind child of the coal-miner a compellingly human little soul, yet to touch him with a warmth and beauty of imagination so exquisite that it pains the heart; to do all this so deftly, so tenderly that one draws a quick breath of wonder--these are only bare suggestions of the power that created Margaret Prescott Montague's _What Mr. Grey Said_.

_Suggested Points for Study and Comment_

1. Contrast the richness of sense-perceptions of Stanislaus with his poverty of all things else.