“I was only following orders”
Impure Blood“I was only following orders” is a familiar defense of conduct carried out under authority, but the novel gives it no easy absolution. In a conversation about French officers who arrested Jews during the occupation, Frankie invokes the phrase with bitter irony: the officers received commendations, yet the existence of others who resisted prevents obedience from serving as a complete answer.
Historical Context
The phrase arises as the investigators consider the wartime past of Vincent Dantier and Adam Djourescu. They had been young officers who received commendations for their efforts; Djourescu was remembered as an exceptional performer, and the roundup of Jews became another opportunity for distinction. The arrests were not a small or abstract act: more than a thousand men, women, and children were taken in two days.
The setting makes the history immediate. Bonbon observes that the arrests happened in the same buildings where the present-day conversation is taking place. The physical continuity between the site and the remembered actions brings institutional history into the room, rather than leaving it safely in the past.
The Argument Over Obedience
Granot resists an easy moral judgment. He asks the others to imagine the pressure on the officers and says they probably did not enjoy their work, despite the commendations. His response offers circumstance as a consideration, not proof that the officers lacked agency. The awards themselves sharpen the problem: the system did not merely compel action but also recognized and rewarded it.
Frankie answers by turning the familiar excuse into an accusation. Her reference to the claim that she was only following orders is pointedly ironic, and the discussion briefly falls silent: Granot, though not usually sensitive, does not press her further. The phrase exposes the gap between explaining conduct through pressure and accepting responsibility for what that conduct did.
Resistance and Responsibility
Frankie complicates the defense by noting that not every French officer complied. Some deliberately lost paperwork; others carried out more active acts of resistance. These examples do not erase the pressures Granot raises, but they show that compliance was not the only possible response. The contrast makes individual choice part of the historical record.
Granot’s follow-up—what happened to those resisters and their families—keeps the cost of refusal in view. The exchange therefore avoids treating resistance as a costless alternative or obedience as an inevitable one. The phrase remains morally inadequate on its own: the novel places the pressures of the period beside both the scale of the arrests and the existence of people who chose to resist.
