After The Dance by Lev Tolstoy
After The Dance by Lev Tolstoy
This story vividly exposes hypocritical life in general and customary army’s brutality in particular. What a shocking contrast is between the general’s outer brilliance and fondness toward his daughter, and his ruthlessness toward a soldier whom he personally walks through a death-threatening torture! While they were bragging about not having capital punishment, they killed many people by this type of torture – by running them through lines soldiers, often a thousand men in line, repeatedly several times, which often guaranteed the death of the person – of a soldier for any disobedience or refusal from the service, or for taking pity of others punished the same way, and of a civil person – for refusal to comply with a government’s regulation. But, again, this story is not local to Russia, nor to that time. We can see atrocities happening nowadays almost everywhere – take policemen attitude toward civil people, for instance, - they show who they serve as soon as there’s any conflict of interests between people and government arises.
