The House with Chicken Legs

The Gate is a symbol of the Relationship Between Life and Death. The Gate is an opening between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The Yaga houses are the only ones that can make The Gate appear during the Yagas’ guiding ceremonies. Then the Yagas usher the dead through The Gate and over the threshold to the beyond, or the afterlife. For a long time, Marinka avoids The Gate; she wants nothing to do with the dead or learning to guide them. Once Baba passes through The Gate with Nina, Marinka’s regard for the portal changes. She does everything in her power to traverse this threshold, desperate to get Baba back. Her ever-shifting relationship with The Gate captures Marinka’s struggle to reconcile with death. She is afraid of losing more people she loves and is afraid of dying, too. She wants to resurrect those she has lost and to bring herself back to life. The Gate straddles both worlds and conveys how inextricable life and death are; one cannot exist without the other.

Baba Yaga’s scarf symbolizes the Tension Between Tradition and Self-Determination. After Baba passes through The Gate, Marinka sits in the house alone clutching the scarf. “It smells of her: lavender water, bread dough, borsch, and kvass” (109). Holding the scarf helps Marinka to reconnect with her absent grandmother. She can feel her presence just by clutching the garment she left behind. When she dons the scarf later on, Marinka is maintaining her connection with Baba—and the Yaga tradition by extension. However, she rips off the scarf and throws it into a puddle as soon as she is bullied for wearing it. (Salma tells her she looks “like the ugly witch who lives in that rotten old house” when she sees her in the scarf [129].) Salma’s insult makes Marinka realize the headscarf overtly publicizes her ties to the Yaga tradition, which she is eager to cast off. This is why she eagerly accepts Salma’s new scarf gift the next day. The scarf gift offers her the illusion of autonomy and independence. Because she no longer looks like her grandmother in the new scarf, it’s easier for her to believe she has escaped her influence on her life and identity.