Love Between Tanya And Vassily example essay topic

Enemy at the Gates, a film with intense violence and man's inhumanity to man, tells the story of the triumph of love and friendship set amidst the brutality of World War II Stalingrad. It is the winter of 1942, and a desperate, poorly equipped and demoralized Russian army faces the possibility of crushing defeat by the might of the German blitzkrieg. A young na " ive soldier from the Urals, Vassily Zaitsev, arrives in Stalingrad where he is thrust into battle amid the needless slaughter of his fellow soldiers be the Germans and his own troops. To his shock, he is not given a rifle to use during the attack.

Instead, the men are paired together and one is given a rifle while the other is given extra ammunition. Vassily survives the first fierce assault and finds himself side-by-side with the political officer, Danilov. They are trapped among the bodies of fallen Russian soldiers behind the lines, and Vassily's talent as a sniper, homed to perfection from a childhood spent hunting wolves with his grandfather, is realized by Danilov when Vassily calmly and methodically kills five German soldiers. Returning to the relative safety of Russian controlled sector in the city, Danilov, a writer, glorifies Vassily's exploits in a newspaper article. So begins the unlikely friendship between the highly educated political officer Danilov and the barely literate Private Vassily Zaitsev.

Vassily is then elevated to the status of hero when Danilov suggests to an angry and demanding Nikita Kruschev that instead of motivating the soldiers with terror and fear of losing their lives, they be given a hero to emulate. So begins a campaign of Soviet snipers methodically decimating the ranks of the invaders. The Germans counter by bringing in the elite Commander of the German Sniper Corp, Major Konig. A battle begins between these two as both struggle to win the hearts and minds of each man's Army by hunting the other man down. During a chance encounter, Danilov and Vassily meet the beautiful and educated Tanya, a soldier in the Stalingrad home defense campaign. They both fall in love with Tanya.

In an attempt to win Tanya's love, Danilov offers Tanya a safer position within the military, however, she prefers to fight with a rifle in her hand and looks to Vassily as a hero worthy of praise. His shy uncertainty and obvious discomfort in her presence only serve to intensify their feelings for each other. When Danilov learns of Tanya's love for Vassily instead of him, his jealousy prompts him to send Vassily into evermore dangerous and desperate situations. However, the love between Tanya and Vassily grows ever stronger even as they are trapped under fire from Major Konig's rifle and Vassily's loyalty to his friend Danilov never wavers.

Despair sets in when Danilov believes Tanya has been killed while attempting to help a friend escape the madness that was Stalingrad. He searches for Vassily and finds him in a desperate standoff with the German sharpshooter, each patiently waiting for the other to show himself. Danilov mourns the loss of his dream of a life with Tanya and reconciles his love for the now dead Tanya and his friendship with Vassily. In the ultimate act of friendship, Danilov chooses to sacrifice himself to the sniper's bullet so Vassily can live. Danilov was motivated by several things, among them ambition, as witnessed by his interactions with Kruschev throughout the movie and his writing of the exploits of the hero Vassily. His utopian dream of a communist society where all things are equal and his unrequited love for Tanya were shown by his attempts to remove her from danger and bring Vassily ever closer to danger.

And finally, his true desire for friendship was shown in his sacrifice of his life. Vassily, on the other hand, wished only to do his duty to his country, save his friends and love Tanya. Time after time, against all odds, Vassily accepted his assignments without complaint and never questioned his friendship with Danilov or his love for Tanya. And so in conclusion, the universal theme of love, friendship, war and peace and the resulting conflict that arises within the boundaries of the human experience are evident once again. In the end, love and friendship overcame the cruelty of war and flourished amidst the carnage of blood and bullets. In the end, the bonds of friendship ran deeper than the division caused by jealousy.

In the end, good (as represented by the honorable and likeable Vassily) triumphed over evil (as represented by the coldness and hardened heart of the German sniper Konig). And in the end, peace and goodness replaced the evil and the crushing agony of war.