{"id":846,"date":"2018-10-18T10:04:29","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T14:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=846"},"modified":"2018-10-18T10:04:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T14:04:29","slug":"the-persistence-of-fate-in-vasily-grossmans-everything-flows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2018\/10\/18\/the-persistence-of-fate-in-vasily-grossmans-everything-flows\/","title":{"rendered":"The Persistence of Fate in Vasily Grossman’s “Everything Flows”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By August Hagemann<\/p>\n

Though Vasily Grossman holds that individuals are to be held accountable for their actions under Stalin\u2019s regime, he contends in his novel Everything Flows<\/em> that it is fate that ultimately determined who faced what set of circumstances and choices under Stalin.\u00a0 In Grossman\u2019s work, fate therefore determined who was to be a victim and who a persecutor.<\/p>\n

Grossman develops the first part of his idea, the notion of individual guilt, while discussing Judas I, the first of four archetypes of people who denounced others to the government that he presents.\u00a0 Grossman explains that this particular Judas issued a denunciation because he was tortured.\u00a0 However, the only difference between this Judas and his neighbors who did not denounce anyone is that \u201c[his neighbors] were not interrogated\u201d (p. 59).\u00a0 That this person is not essentially evil is further emphasized by the \u201csunken eyes of a martyr\u201d that mark him (p. 58).\u00a0 Despite this association with early heroes of Christendom celebrated for their meekness and submission, and by extension the limited attribution of these characteristics to Judas I, Grossman is clear about what makes this person a Judas rather than a saint: \u201che committed slander\u201d (p. 59).<\/p>\n

Thus, Grossman seems to argue that Judas I must be individually guilty, because no matter his circumstances it was still his individual decision that propagated the Stalinist system — despite the difficulties he faced and the fact that he would not otherwise have denounced anyone, he did in fact still utter denunciations.\u00a0 However, it is important to recall that the only difference between Judas I and his neighbors is his arrest.\u00a0 It follows, then, that anyone else in the same circumstances as Judas I would have made similar or the same decisions, and so would have been equally guilty.\u00a0 According to Grossman, the reason it was Judas I in particular who bears the guilt is fate.\u00a0 This is a notion he develops most extensively just after Anna Sergeyevna goes to the hospital, when she comments to Ivan Grigoryevich that \u201chappiness doesn\u2019t seem to be [their] fate in this world\u201d (p. 146).\u00a0 The role of fate in shaping individual experiences is further elaborated upon as Ivan Grigoryevich begins to analyze his life, \u201cevaluating all that had befallen him\u201d (p. 146).\u00a0 What is of vital importance in this second passage is the passive voice — in Ivan Grigoryevich\u2019s analysis, what is important is not what he did, but rather what happened to\u00a0 him, things out of his control which nonetheless shaped his life.\u00a0 Anna Sergeyevna\u2019s comment has a similar interpretation, as she feels happiness eludes her and Ivan Grigoryevich simply because such is not their fate.\u00a0 There is no reason to suppose that this notion of fate is not also applicable to each Judas and all of their victims.\u00a0 Though each made individual choices, for better or worse, each was presented with those choices because of fate.<\/p>\n

In this way, Vasily Grossman is able to maintain a moral system in which individual guilt and fate coexist.\u00a0 Though Grossman argues that the people who cooperated with or were indifferent to Stalin are culpable for their actions, he simultaneously conveys that it was fate that placed them into the situations that led them to commit the heinous acts they did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By August Hagemann Though Vasily Grossman holds that individuals are to be held accountable for their actions under Stalin\u2019s regime, he contends in his novel Everything Flows that it is fate that ultimately determined who faced what set of circumstances … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-essays","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}