{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6713", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 6713, "subject": "Short Story 116: The Flag", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2015-01-25T17:52:06+00:00", "last": "2015-01-25T17:52:06+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2015-01-25T17:52:06+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 116: The Flag", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "*THE FLAG*\n\n“The Flag” first appeared in *Storeys from the Old Hotel* in 1988.\n\nSUMMARY:\n\nThe narrator recalls playing with his friends as a child. They ran in the\nsquare, scattering pigeons from a statue atop a column, and only a small\nlame boy actually looked up at it and gave it attention.. As older\nfriends, they drink together and the small young man tells the story of the\nhero whose statue they had played beneath. The hero had been the youngest,\nbeardless knight in the battle with Turkish enemies. In the battle, the\nhero snatched the banner from the mud when the older knights were routed,\nand that action prompted a reversal that drove the invaders away “nearly a\nthousand years ago.”\n\n The next day, when the narrator looks at the statue of the\nhero holding his flag, he fancies that one or its legs is bent. Year pass\nand “the gray-uniformed soldiers came.” The narrators? paper is shut down,\nand trucks come in the night to grab women and men. One night he hears a\nslithering ratlike noise outside, to find a paper entitled *The Flag* which\nexposes what the soldiers and their masters have done: “who had been\narrested, taken, what the charges were, and even the prisons and camps\nwhere some were held.”\n\n The title is enough for the narrator to deduce who printed\nthe paper. The lame friend disappears, no doubt killed and buried “among\nblack pines.” Yet many more papers have sprung up in its place, and the\nnarrator asserts, “They cannot stamp them out; where one is destroyed five\nmore spring up. I work for one, and we have already chosen the spot where\nwe will never erect his monument.”\n\nDISCUSSION:\n\n *The Flag* is one of Wolfe’s most straightforward stories. The\nsmall, weak, and lame hero leads by example, just as the young knight\npicked up the flag and resisted the Turkish invasion. Bravery inspires\nothers, even if it comes at the cost of an individual’s life. It seems\nmost likely that this is set in Eastern Europe and references the Great\nTurkish Invasion of Georgia circa 1080 AD. The hints that the young hero\nwas a figure of ridicule to his comrades because of beardlessness would\ncertainly fit in with a Georgian or Russian setting. Of course Wolfe’s love\nof symbolism here shows what a flag represents beyond nationalism: a\nrallying point that inspires others, especially when it serves the truth\nand helps the suppressed to find courage.\n\n The boy’s contribution is palpable, and there is no need\nfor a monument, for the narrator has already seen the symbol of the past\ntransformed to resemble the boy, with its bent leg. The continued existence\nof the papers and the ideological refusal to be stomped out is monument\nenough, and a physical artifact is not required when an idea, once born,\ncan live forever.\n\n While the Wolfe-wiki suggests that the gray uniformed\nofficers might be Germans and represent the German expansion in the period\nleading up to World War II, it is just as likely that the event we are\nwitnessing is the Red Army Invasion of the Democratic Republic of Georgia\nin 1921. The lack of Bolshevik sympathy in Georgia prompted guerilla\npockets to form after Soviet Russia declared it to be the Georgian Soviet\nSocialist Republic. (There are gray varieties of both Red Army and Nazi\nuniforms).\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS\n\n While the action seems to revolve around the political\nunrest in Europe and Russia in the epoch of the World Wars, is there a true\nhistorical cognate with the statue of the hero holding his flag that can be\nnamed? The Georgian city of Tblisi does seem to have statues of knights\nmounted on columns, but I do not know if any specific one is lauded as in\nthis story or depicted with a flag.\n\n Do the historical resonances work better with the socialist\nRussian invasion of democratic Georgia in 1921 or with the Nazi invasion of\nRussia, Operation Barbarossa, in 1941? The amount of governmental control\nvastly favors the first historical example and agrees with the timing of\nthe Turkish invasion of Georgia. The second example does not seem to lead\nto the same level of political subversion within Russia (ie — the Germans\ndid not seem to gain this insidious control over them). The possibility\nthat Germany itself is the setting does not seem to match up with the\ntimeline of the Turkish invasion, though of course the establishment of the\nThird Reich involved just such prison camps and disappearances. The\nCaucasus seems the most likely setting.\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\n As far as Wolfe’s short fiction goes, this little glimpse\nat heroism does seem to plant the seed of General Mint — a small and almost\ntimid woman who becomes an effective rallying point and symbol. In\naddition to echoing the fight for some autonomy found in *Operation Ares*,\nstories of rebels and revolutions show up late in Wolfe’s career as well,\nin stories such as “Bloodsport” or even *The Land Across*.\n\nRESOURCES\n\n“The Flag”. Wolfe-Wiki. 8 November 2010. Web. 25 January 2015.\nhttp://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Stories.TheFlag" } ] } ] }