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Katina
The Royal Air Force narrator in “Katina” is a dedicated pilot stationed in Greece during World War II who recounts his squadron’s failure to drive the Germans out of Greece in 1941. He and his fellow airmen—including his close friends Peter and Fin—take in a young Greek orphan named Katina, who becomes a symbol of the RAF’s commitment to liberating Greece. As they move between airfields, battling an enemy that continually outmaneuvers and outnumbers them, the narrator frequently personifies the encroaching mountains, reflecting the inevitability of the RAF’s defeat. In the end, Katina is killed by German gunfire, and as he watches his aircraft burn, he sees her image in the flames—a reminder that hope endures even in the face of devastation.
The RAF Narrator Quotes in The Great Automatic Grammatizator
The The Great Automatic Grammatizator quotes below are all either spoken by The RAF Narrator or refer to The RAF Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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8. Katina Quotes
I had a feeling that they were laughing at us, laughing at the smallness of our numbers and at the hopeless courage of the pilots. I felt that it was the mountains, not us, who were the clever ones.
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I saw Katina standing right in the middle of the field, standing firmly with her legs astride and her back to us, looking up at the Germans as they dived past. I have never seen anything smaller and more angry and more fierce in my life.
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The next moment I shall never forget. On every side, as if by magic, men appeared out of the ground. They swarmed out of their trenches and like a crazy mob poured on to the aerodrome, running towards the tiny little bundle, which lay motionless in the middle of the field.
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The RAF Narrator Character Timeline in The Great Automatic Grammatizator
The timeline below shows where the character The RAF Narrator appears in The Great Automatic Grammatizator. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
8. Katina
Royal Air Force pilots stationed in Greece in April 1941—among them Peter, Fin, and the RAF narrator —discover a nine-year-old girl (Katina) sitting alone and motionless as she watches her village burn....
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...the girl’s name is Katina and that her whole family was killed by German soldiers. The RAF narrator watches the mountains through the rain and ominously observes that they have begun closing in...
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...chaos unfolds around her. Soon after, Monkey makes her an official member of the squadron. The RAF narrator recalls a moment during this period when a soldier called The Bull admitted to having...
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...leaves to aid a nearby village under attack, and he never returns. Later that night, the RAF narrator swears he hears Peter, his former roommate, enter their tent, undress, and climb into bed....
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The Battle of Athens begins on April 20, an aerial fight the RAF narrator describes as “the last of the great dog-fighting air battles.” As planes clash in the...
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Early the next morning, the RAF narrator and Fin watch in awe as hundreds of Greek villagers descend on the airfield, camouflaging...
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...carries her to Doc, who touches her wrist and solemnly confirms she is dead. As the RAF narrator watches his Hurricane aircraft burning in the distance, he feels that same fire igniting “in...
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