The Diamond Eye

Mila’s relationship to the life of the mind is a measure of her character’s growth as well as an indicator of the strength of her relationships. In the months before the German invasion, Mila is working in a library and writing her thesis. Her friends tease her about the extent of her obsession with Bogdan Khmelnitsky and 16th-century Ukrainian politics. She tells her father that she “packed [her] dissertation” in accordance with his belief that wartime boredom requires reading material (41). Mila falls back into her research at times when she needs to relax or be reminded of her former life, and Kostia assures her that, however much war has changed her, any of her friends would recognize her through her love for history. In the Epilogue, Mila’s Moscow apartment, a sign of favor from the state, has “an entire wall filled with nothing but [her] books” (412). This marks her transition back to her peacetime self, though one that now carries memories of another life.

When Mila meets Kostia, it is a sign of their fundamental similarity that he carries his beloved grandmother’s copy of War and Peace. Mila finds it among her belongings after they are separated, and she “double[s] over weeping, clutching the book” (260), as holding it reminds her she has no idea of his fate.