Tatyana Tolstaya's White Walls: Summary

“White Walls” Paper

Tatyana Tolstaya was born in May of 1951 in Leningrad, USSR. It is impossible to ignore the family heritage that her name evokes. She is the granddaughter of the Soviet writer Alexei Tolstoy, who wrote historical novels about Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and the great-grandniece of the even more famous author of Voyna i mir (1865-1869; War and Peace, 1886), Leo Tolstoy. She was born into a family of rich literary tradition. Her most famous short story, “White Walls” was written in 1999. This story is from Tatyana’s perspective from when she was a child. She describes what her life was like back then. She does this in such a way though, that it seems as if everything was too perfect. From what we know about the Soviet time period, it did not sound as nice as she makes it out to be in this story. She talks about how her and her sisters redecorated their home, and what life was like throughout the town which they lived in. They tore down a lot of old wallpaper and put up a new design. The story goes in chronological order and it is easy to see the differences in the time periods from what she is saying. Tolstaya is describing her every day adventures and how they related to the Soviet Union at the time. For everything that they would do there would be a little bit of history mixed in with it. Tolstaya is attempting to tell us that though the conditions in Russia were very rough for a long time, she was able to find the positives and build her life around them. There are many forms of symbolism throughout this entire story. The three symbols that I’m focusing on are the White Walls, Johnson + Johnson, and Mikhail Avgustovich Janson. She is not so subtly
Houska 2 making a statement about the conditions in post Soviet Russia. When she starts talking about the post USSR, much of what she says has to do with rebuilding. They are trying to start over and build from the ground up. She clearly states that this was a time of reconstruction and reform. The three symbols I chose support this idea greatly. All four of the dates mentioned in this story are significant. 1948 was the real rise of the Soviet Union and Communism. 1968 is very important because the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. The summer Olympics were held in Moscow in 1980, and finally in 1997, the Russian-Chechen Peace Treaty was signed. The first symbol I chose was the white walls. Tatyana and her sisters tore down layer upon layer of wallpaper from the wall. They then put up Versailles wallpaper. She then starts thinking about just putting plain white wallpaper up. Saying, “Then our misguided decoration would be hidden under even, white, aristocratically indifferent, democratically neutral, benign layers of Buddhist simplicity. Plain white is straightforward and elegant.” Later in the paragraph she says, “Just welcoming white walls.” There are many different ways in which this can be seen as symbolic. I believe it is a brief reference to the Berlin Wall. Shortly after the Berlin Wall went up people were spray painting and using graffiti all over the wall. It went from a grayish wall to a colorful wall. People in Tolstaya’s neighborhood had many different designs on their walls, but she mentions how most of them had changed to simple and plain white walls. In having white walls, there is always room for improvement. You are never stuck with one look because you can always simply change it. Tolstaya is very optimistic in that she feels that with the end of Communism and the Soviet
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Union, there is great room for improvement. I believe that she is correct in this assessment because Russia today is not as big of super power as the United States, but it is certainly on its way to be there soon. Another big symbol in this piece, I believe, is Johnson + Johnson. Tolstaya never clarifies entirely what Johnson + Johnson is, but it seems to be a big company. This could be a new company that was formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We learned about how when the USSR dissolved the government and the economy took a huge hit. I believe this is an example of a company that is on the rise. This can definitely be viewed as a symbol due to the fact that it is not only a business, but the name Johnson + Johnson makes it seem as if it is a family run operation. The sentence after Tolstaya mentions Johnson + Johnson, she says, “From abroad, there were quick-acting cleaners and spot removers-aerosols to erase memory, acids to eliminate the past.” This is another example of how she wants the past to be erased. Although Johnson + Johnson is only mentioned a few times in this short story I believe it is a crucial symbol. The business industry is on the rise in Russia. The final symbol I chose was Mikhail Avgustovich Janson. M.A .Janson was the builder of the dacha that Tolstaya and her family lived in when they were kids. He is constantly mentioned throughout this piece. Tolstaya talks about how she always found some of his old stuff in the attic and how she was always very intrigued by what she would find. The way they describe Janson, makes it seem that he was a very nice and kind man. The main message that I get from reading this is that Russia is a rebuilding country. All the examples in the story of tearing down old things to replace them with new
Houska 4 items shows this message. If it weren’t for Janson then Tolstaya would never have lived in this house and she wouldn’t have found all of the old items left behind by him. She talks about how Janson essentially dispersed without any remembrance of him. Tolstaya says that, “Janson dispersed, disintegrated, vanished into the earth.” This shows how over time things become lost. She then talks about how his plaque saying his name had been stolen by an admirer of nonferrous metals. Many people have come and gone but the country has remained alive. As new generations evolve the country has to adapt to their specific needs. Again this is why I believe Tolstaya is trying to tell us that Russia is a rebuilding country. All three symbols mentioned played crucial parts of this story. Different people could interpret them in many different ways, but this is how I see them. They all show different parts of Tolstaya’s childhood and how she grew up. All of these symbols also have historical references in them. Again it depends on how you view and interpret them. Someone could think it means one thing when another person could thinks it means the complete opposite. She never makes a comment specifically about Communism in this piece. She mentions Lenin and Stalin a few times but does not give you her impression of them. An author for The New York Review of Books says about “White Walls”, that “Tolstaya’s favorite theme is an inexhaustible one: the passage of time, often accompanied by a potent regret for opportunities lost.” This is extremely relevant because the whole story is about the passage of time and how things change. All in all the main message is that Russia is a rebuilding country that is on its way to becoming more of a super power than it is today.