Short Story 116: The Flag

THE FLAG “The Flag” first appeared in Storeys from the Old Hotel in 1988. SUMMARY: The narrator recalls playing with his friends as a child. They ran in the square, scattering pigeons from a statue atop a column, and only a small lame boy actually looked up at it and gave it attention.. As older friends, they drink together and the small young man tells the story of the hero whose statue they had played beneath. The hero had been the youngest, beardless knight in the battle with Turkish enemies. In the battle, the hero snatched the banner from the mud when the older knights were routed, and that action prompted a reversal that drove the invaders away “nearly a thousand years ago.” The next day, when the narrator looks at the statue of the hero holding his flag, he fancies that one or its legs is bent. Year pass and “the gray-uniformed soldiers came.” The narrators? paper is shut down, and trucks come in the night to grab women and men. One night he hears a slithering ratlike noise outside, to find a paper entitled The Flag which exposes what the soldiers and their masters have done: “who had been arrested, taken, what the charges were, and even the prisons and camps where some were held.” The title is enough for the narrator to deduce who printed the paper. The lame friend disappears, no doubt killed and buried “among black pines.” Yet many more papers have sprung up in its place, and the narrator asserts, “They cannot stamp them out; where one is destroyed five more spring up. I work for one, and we have already chosen the spot where we will never erect his monument.” DISCUSSION: The Flag is one of Wolfe’s most straightforward stories. The small, weak, and lame hero leads by example, just as the young knight picked up the flag and resisted the Turkish invasion. Bravery inspires others, even if it comes at the cost of an individual’s life. It seems most likely that this is set in Eastern Europe and references the Great Turkish Invasion of Georgia circa 1080 AD. The hints that the young hero was a figure of ridicule to his comrades because of beardlessness would certainly fit in with a Georgian or Russian setting. Of course Wolfe’s love of symbolism here shows what a flag represents beyond nationalism: a rallying point that inspires others, especially when it serves the truth and helps the suppressed to find courage. The boy’s contribution is palpable, and there is no need for a monument, for the narrator has already seen the symbol of the past transformed to resemble the boy, with its bent leg. The continued existence of the papers and the ideological refusal to be stomped out is monument enough, and a physical artifact is not required when an idea, once born, can live forever. While the Wolfe-wiki suggests that the gray uniformed officers might be Germans and represent the German expansion in the period leading up to World War II, it is just as likely that the event we are witnessing is the Red Army Invasion of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1921. The lack of Bolshevik sympathy in Georgia prompted guerilla pockets to form after Soviet Russia declared it to be the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. (There are gray varieties of both Red Army and Nazi uniforms). UNANSWERED QUESTIONS While the action seems to revolve around the political unrest in Europe and Russia in the epoch of the World Wars, is there a true historical cognate with the statue of the hero holding his flag that can be named? The Georgian city of Tblisi does seem to have statues of knights mounted on columns, but I do not know if any specific one is lauded as in this story or depicted with a flag. Do the historical resonances work better with the socialist Russian invasion of democratic Georgia in 1921 or with the Nazi invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa, in 1941? The amount of governmental control vastly favors the first historical example and agrees with the timing of the Turkish invasion of Georgia. The second example does not seem to lead to the same level of political subversion within Russia (ie — the Germans did not seem to gain this insidious control over them). The possibility that Germany itself is the setting does not seem to match up with the timeline of the Turkish invasion, though of course the establishment of the Third Reich involved just such prison camps and disappearances. The Caucasus seems the most likely setting. CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS: As far as Wolfe’s short fiction goes, this little glimpse at heroism does seem to plant the seed of General Mint — a small and almost timid woman who becomes an effective rallying point and symbol. In addition to echoing the fight for some autonomy found in Operation Ares, stories of rebels and revolutions show up late in Wolfe’s career as well, in stories such as “Bloodsport” or even The Land Across. RESOURCES “The Flag”. Wolfe-Wiki. 8 November 2010. Web. 25 January 2015. http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Stories.TheFlag