{"id":335,"date":"2018-10-02T21:50:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T01:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/?p=335"},"modified":"2018-10-02T21:50:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T01:50:00","slug":"sympathetic-cows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/the-russian-countryside-and-the-peasant-village\/sympathetic-cows\/","title":{"rendered":"Sympathetic Cows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Both Shushkin\u2019s \u201cGogal and Raika\u201d and Platonov\u2019s \u201cThe Cow\u201d humanize cows, making them into martyrs for the starving Russian Peasants during political change and uncertainty. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The cow in \u201cGogal and Raika\u201d is used as the name of the short story: Raika. She immediately becomes a sympathetic character when the speaker, after lamenting about spending short stints of time outside in the harsh Siberian winter, reminds the reader that \u201cthe cow\u2019s out in the pen\u201d (220). The cow is described as having \u201csad eyes\u201d and an aura that once she has been seen \u201cyou feel no peace inside: here \u2014 poor and badly off though you may be \u2014 you can at least warm up, but she has to stand out there\u201d (220-221). Raika\u2019s freezing starvation could be compared to those exiled to the Gulags (This could definitely be a reach but Gulag and \u201cGogal,\u201d from the title of the short story\u201d are very similar sounding words). After the harsh winter, which the family barely survives, \u201cRaika was no more\u2026 Raika arrived at our gate with her intestines hanging out of her belly, dragging along after her. She\u2019d been run through with a pitchfork\u201d (227-228). Raika was killed eating from a neighbors haystack so that she did not starve.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The cow in Platonov\u2019s story, \u201cThe Cow,\u201d similarly has sympathetic human qualities, such as her \u201cwarm, dark eyes\u201d and how she misses her son: \u201cOur cow\u2019s already crying!\u201d (248, 259). When her son dies, the cow falls into an irreversible depression. Platonov includes a crucial difference between cow grief and human grief that makes her loss even more tragic: \u201cShe was unable to allay this grief inside her with words, consciousness, a friend or any other distraction\u201d (255). This absolute hopelessness is similar to the hunger felt by Shushkin\u2019s cow, and many peasants alike. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Both Shushkin\u2019s \u201cGogal and Raika\u201d and Platonov\u2019s \u201cThe Cow\u201d humanize cows, making them into martyrs for the starving Russian Peasants during political change and uncertainty. The cow in \u201cGogal and Raika\u201d is used as the name of the short story: Raika. She immediately becomes a sympathetic character when the speaker, after lamenting about spending short [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":691,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[33,27,32],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-russian-countryside-and-the-peasant-village","tag-cow","tag-platonov","tag-shushkin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/691"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}