Hadji Murád · Chapter
XVII explained
The aoul that hosted Hadji Murád is destroyed by the Russians.
What happens
The aoul that hosted Hadji Murád is destroyed by the Russians. Sado returns to find his home ruined, his son killed, and his livelihood burned. The community is overwhelmed by a visceral disgust and perplexity at the senseless cruelty, feeling an instinct to exterminate the Russians like pests. They face the choice of rebuilding under constant threat or submitting to the Russians, and the elders decide to send envoys to Shamil for help.
Themes in this chapter
The Nature of War and Violence
The chapter depicts the brutal, senseless destruction of the aoul and the killing of a child, highlighting war's dehumanizing and irrational cruelty.
Resilience and Defiance
Despite devastation, the community immediately begins rebuilding and decides to seek help from Shamil, showing their refusal to submit.
Characters to notice
- Sado
Returns to his destroyed aoul, finds his sáklya in ruins and his son dead; he digs a grave for his son.
- Hadji Murád
The aoul destroyed is the one where he spent the night before defecting to the Russians.
- Shamil
The elders decide to send envoys to Shamil asking for help.
Key passages
“The feeling experienced by all the Chechens, from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than hate. It was not hatred, for they did not regard those Russian dogs as human beings; but it was such repulsion, disgust, and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them—like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders, or wolves—was as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.”
The Chechens felt more than hatred; they saw the Russians as subhuman pests, and their instinct to destroy them was as automatic as self-defense.
The narrator describes the profound dehumanization and instinctive revulsion the Chechens feel toward the Russians after the attack.