The Narrator and Mitka

The Narrator and Mitka’s relationship grows within the Red Army regiment from companionship into a close, consequential bond. Mitka includes the silent boy in a secret mission of revenge, and the boy’s pride in being chosen sits alongside his awareness that Mitka is acting against military expectations. Their connection is tested by this solitary act and given a tender, practical conclusion when the boy must leave the regiment for a center for lost children.

Companionship in the regiment

Mitka and the Narrator share a life in the regiment at a time when the boy is separated from his family and unable to speak. Mitka’s place in the military is especially impressive to him: he regards Mitka as a Hero of the Soviet Union, a figure whose skill and standing make his attention feel like an honor. Their closeness is conveyed less through conversation than through action. When a commotion brings soldiers running to the guard line after an attack at a village feast, Mitka rushes out and pulls the boy along with him. This small gesture places the boy beside Mitka as events unfold, rather than leaving him at the edge of the regiment’s life.

Their trust becomes more explicit before dawn, when Mitka wakes the boy and tells him to dress, without explaining their destination. The boy helps bind Mitka’s feet and pull on his boots. Mitka retrieves his rifle from behind the bed, disguises its absence by leaving the empty case in place, and gathers the telescope, tripod, ammunition belt, and field glasses. He puts the field glasses around the boy’s neck. The sequence makes the boy an active companion in the preparations, entrusted with equipment and included in the secrecy, even though Mitka does not tell him what the mission is.

The secret mission and its risks

The pair slip past the field kitchen and the guards, cross a field, and head toward the woods. The Narrator does not know their purpose, but understands that Mitka is acting on his own and may lose his position in the Army and the esteem attached to it. That recognition does not make him withdraw. He feels proud to have been selected to accompany Mitka, whose mission remains mysterious to him. His loyalty is therefore not based on a full account of Mitka’s intentions; it takes the form of staying beside him despite uncertainty.

The journey also shows the strain Mitka bears. He limps, struggles with the rifle slipping from his shoulder, and pushes on through the night. The Narrator follows and assists, sharing the risk of being discovered without knowing exactly what lies ahead. Mitka’s occasional impatience and his warning that the boy should forget the curses he has heard do not undo their closeness. Instead, the episode presents a relationship conducted through proximity, practical help, and brief gestures rather than sustained speech.

The mission is revenge for the deaths of Mitka’s friends. In retrospect, the Narrator understands that Mitka has chosen to administer his own justice, even at the possible cost of his military position and public honor. The boy admires this decision because Mitka is answerable, in his view, to his own sense of what he must do, not merely to his reputation. His admiration is not simple approval of every action. When the two watch the village, the Narrator asks by gesture for Mitka to kill a dog, and Mitka refuses. The refusal marks a boundary between them: the boy makes the request, but Mitka does not follow it. The exchange shows that their closeness does not erase their different responses to what they see.

Loyalty, justice, and private judgment

For the Narrator, Mitka’s revenge gives concrete form to an idea of justice exercised by an individual rather than delegated to a collective. He interprets Mitka’s choice as a personal obligation: the prestige of being a celebrated soldier would mean little if Mitka could not live with himself for failing to act on behalf of his dead friends. This is the boy’s reading of Mitka’s conduct, not a claim that the regiment approves it. The mission is described as private and dangerous precisely because Mitka risks the standing he has earned.

The boy’s pride in Mitka also carries a desire for a kind of independence. He sees Mitka’s course as a path that can be taken alone, or with only one companion, apart from the movement of the working masses. The Narrator’s presence beside Mitka gives that idea a relational shape: the boy is not the agent of the revenge, but he is the one person Mitka brings along. The episode binds them through shared secrecy while preserving an important difference in agency. Mitka chooses and acts; the boy watches, helps, and forms an interpretation of what the choice means.

After the mission, Mitka and the Narrator return to camp unnoticed. Mitka buries the spent cartridges, removes traces of their presence, and later cleans and puts away the rifle and its sight. These careful steps complete the secrecy the two began by leaving an empty case behind. They also set limits on what the boy can know or do: he accompanies Mitka and witnesses the aftermath, but Mitka manages the concealment. Their bond is close without being equal in responsibility.

Separation and the relationship’s ending

The relationship’s immediate ending comes not from a quarrel but from the approaching end of the war and the regulations for placing lost children. The Narrator needs several days to accept that he will leave Mitka, Gavrila, and the other soldiers. Gavrila explains that the boy must go to a special center while officials determine whether his parents are alive. The boy holds back tears, and Gavrila is uneasy too; he and Mitka have discussed the boy’s future and would have chosen another solution if one had been available.

Mitka’s farewell is brief and physical: he pats the boy on the shoulder and urges him to uphold the honor of the Red Army. The boy wants to cry but keeps his face composed. That restraint echoes the disciplined bearing he has learned among the soldiers, while making clear how painful the departure is. Gavrila hugs him, and the others shake his hand, but Mitka’s individual gesture retains the intimacy of the bond formed during the mission.

Their parting is not presented as a final rejection or a promise of reunion. Gavrila says that if no relatives claim the boy within three months after the war ends, he will take responsibility for him and send him to a school where he can learn to speak again. Mitka’s place in this practical plan is not specified. What remains is the boy’s memory of having been trusted and accompanied, and Mitka’s last appeal that he carry the regiment’s honor with him.

A bond against the background of war

The relationship acquires further weight against the boy’s earlier experience of isolation and persecution. Before he joins the regiment, peasants see his dark features and call him a Jew or Gypsy; he fears being treated as one of the people marked for death. He also witnesses the passage of locked trains carrying Jews and Roma, hears accounts of their fate, and encounters a child who has fallen from a train. These scenes belong to a different stage of the boy’s life: Mitka is not shown witnessing them with him. Their relevance to the relationship is the contrast they establish between the boy’s earlier exposure to suspicion and abandonment and his later inclusion in Mitka’s company.

The book’s treatment of wartime brutality also extends beyond the boy’s immediate scenes. In its later discussion of criticism and historical sources, it refers to survivor testimony and camp documents to argue that the violence described was not an invention of the novel. That documentary framing does not make Mitka a witness to those cited accounts or explain his personal motives. It does, however, place the bond between the two characters within a narrative shaped by mass violence, loss, and the question of how an individual can respond. Mitka’s companionship does not undo the boy’s earlier experiences; it gives him, for a time, a trusted place beside another person.