4 ideas
In 'Sevastopol in May,' a shell lands between two officers during a night action. He is killed by a fragment in the chest, and in his final seconds his thoughts race through debts and petty social worries while he believes he is only bruised. Mikhailov, a poorer staff-captain who fell to the ground praying, is only grazed on the head, yet he considers whether being seen as wounded might earn him a decoration.
The officers of the besieged city keep competing for rank, recognition and aristocratic acquaintance while they face imminent death. Fear of looking afraid drives their choices more than fear of dying, and it pushes men into exposure they would otherwise avoid. Tolstoy presents vanity as the characteristic sickness of his age: it shapes behavior most strongly where it is least rational.
The narrator leads the reader through the hospital's amputation rooms and onto the Fourth Bastion. He insists that war must be seen through its real expression, which is blood, suffering and death, and not through banners, drums and generals on horseback. He names Truth as the only hero of his story, which means every heroic account has to be checked against what a wounded body and a frightened mind actually experience.
In 'Sevastopol in August,' Volodya Kozeltsov, a seventeen-year-old ensign fresh from cadet school, arrives at the city eager and terrified and is posted to a battery on the Malakhov. He is killed when the French storm the hill in the final assault. His older brother Mikhail, a seasoned officer, is mortally wounded in the same attack. The Russian army then abandons Sevastopol across the harbor bridge, with soldiers looking back at the burning city in bitterness and shame.