"But I wasn't leaving Piter. I was a man (...)’’
At the beginning of the novel, Lev was an 17 year old boy living alone in a city affected by war. Lev talked about his family and how his father disappeared at the beginning of the war after being accused of being a traitor. His mother and siblings decided to leave the country when they could but Lev decided to stay behind, to try and protect the city. One could argue that Lev had no reasons for remaining in the city but he felt like it was his duty as a man to remain and fight. Even though the government destroyed his family, Lev still decided to stay and fight, thus proving that he was a person who was loyal and who would rather risk his life than to risk being seen as a coward.
"Contrary to popular belief, the experience of terror does not make you braver.’’
Lev lived in a city plagued by war since he was just 15. He lived under siege for more than three years and was accustomed with seeing dead bodies on the street on a daily basis. Despite knowing that he could die at any moment, Lev was more afraid of being punished by his own government. Because of this, he calls the night he spent in prison as being the most traumatic event of his life. In those moments, Lev was not a brave soldier. He was just a scared boy who was forced to grow up much too early for his age.
"None of them got out. If you want to tell yourself something sweet to help you sleep, go ahead, but it's a lie.’’
When Lev wanted to return home after he was kept a night in prison, he discovered that the building in which he stayed until then was bombed and was destroyed completely. Instead of comforting him and trying to convince him that maybe his friends are still alive, Kolya told Lev the quote from above. This proved that in some cases, it was better to accept the truth, even if is not what we want to hear, instead of being lied to and live a lie. The quote also shows that in order to survive, the people living in Leningrad could not live on illusions. Instead, they had to be aware of the truth to be more capable of adapting themselves to the horrors they were experiencing.
