Super
For the youngest child in the family there are always a lot of things to live up to. The older siblings and their achievements hang over the youngest as super-ideals and super-idols that must be lived up to.
Petya Rostov had three siblings. Vera was the example of intelligence, elegance, virtue and propriety. Natasha was exemplary at keeping an optimistic mood and charming everyone who came to the house. Most important was his older brother, Nicholas. A university student, then an army officer who'd seen battle and a superior swordsman, was something Petya wanted to be and Nicholas already was.
Bat
Petya sat on the wide windowsill, a drawing pad balanced evenly on his knees. A science book lay open before him. It was open to a page with a large diagram of a bat. The descriptions printed on the sides of the diagram seemed to discuss the wings of the bat. But Petya wasn't reading them. Rather he was carefully copying the diagram, disregarding the internal structures of the creature and concentrating on the shape, and external details. Behind the bat he sketched the silhouette of clouds and a moon.
Petya was, undoubtedly, the most artistic of the Rostov children.
Wonder
Petya stared up at Captain Theodore Dolokhov with a sense of overwhelming, boyish awe. He had heard so many great, wonderful things about this man, about his heroism and valor in battle.
Captain Denisov stood between them with a dissatisfied frown. "I won't let you take the boy, Theodore. He's young and inexperienced."
"But I already said he could. Besides, why not? He'll be with me and I've done this plenty of times."
Petya, unable to wait anymore, jumped to his feat. "I'm going with you, sir!" he told Dolokhov enthusiastically, his eyes shinning feverishly. "Either way, I'm with you."
Hawk
Petya traced the hawk design on the pearly-white, silken handkerchief. At sixteen he was in such a place for the first time. Obalenski had said that before going to the front they had to experience what it was to be men. Petya had always thought the best way be a man was to fight, to serve.
Now, fidgeting with the handkerchief of the young prostitute spread out on the bed before him, he felt scared, incompetent. Perhaps his father was right saying he wasn't ready to fight, to be a man, if he couldn't even make love to a girl.
Lantern
Petya sat on the edge of a cart, dangling his feet of the side, waiting patiently for his sword to be sharpened. After his excursion with Dolokhov into the enemy camp he had been in a state of exaltation. He felt completed and important, like he was making a different.
In the distance, where Denisov was still holding council, a lantern hung of a hook and dangled in the cold winter breeze. It swayed languidly and Petya felt in tune with its peaceful pace. It lulled him into sleep where he dreamed of soft light and a wonderful, colorful universe.