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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Firing Into Blank Pages:
In Part 9: The Snows of Stalingrad, Death describes Robert Holtzapfel's death at Stalingrad. Death uses a metaphor comparing bullets to language scrawled on blank pages:
It was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were dead Russians and Germans everywhere. Those who remained were firing into the blank pages in front of them. Three languages interwove. The Russian, the bullets, the German.
The Battle of Stalingrad lasted for six and a half months before Hitler's forces finally surrendered on February 2, 1943. It was a turning point in World War II because it severely exhausted German resources and marked the first of Hitler's surrenders. Its casualty count surpassed that of any other World War II battle and possibly any other battle in history.
Robert Holtzapfel dies on January 5, less than a month before the end of the battle. At this point, the "dead Russians and Germans everywhere" make it clear to all present that they are part of a mass casualty event. The "blank pages" the surviving soldiers fire into seem to represent history: the soldiers understand that they are making an important moment in the historical record, but they don't know yet what story they are telling. Death compares the bullets to one of the languages that were spoken at Stalingrad. Many of the Germans and Russians cannot understand one another's words, so bullets become their common language. At the same time, the bullets are one more language that no one fully understands. Two soldiers may understand that they are supposed to kill one another, but the full meaning and implication of that violence is impossible for them to grasp. Not only are they blind to one another's personal reasons for shooting, but they also have no way of knowing how one soldier's death will change the course of the war. Only in retrospect will anyone be able to make sense of "The Russian, the bullets, [and] the German" altogether, and even that story will undoubtedly be riddled with mistranslations and omissions.
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