Babel's short stories provide excellent material for structural analysis. He is a self-conscious, cerebral writer, often to the point of opaqueness. The story chosen, My First Goose is particularly dense in texture and on first reading may well mystify the reader as regards its meaning. It is hoped that the daylight shed on the story in the following pages will remove this obscurity. My First Goose now forms part of the Red Cavalry cycle of stories which deal with the Civil War period of Soviet history, but was originally published separately. It can quite legitimately be studied in isolation, as can most of the stories of the cycle. Nevertheless reference will naturally be made to the overall themes and conflicts of the cycle, where necessary.