SOURCE: "Puškin's The Shot'," in Indiana Slavic Studies, Vol.111, 1963, pp. 113-29.

In the following essay, Shaw argues that "The Shot" offers two points of view—youth and maturity—and that Pushkin does not choose a privileged vantage for the reader.

Puškin's short story, "The Shot," one of The Tales of Belkin, is often anthologized as one of the masterpieces in the art of the short story. However, it has received astonishingly little critical and scholarly attention; one usually finds only brief comment in the broader context of Puškin's prose in general or of The Tales of Belkin. Apparently there exists only one fairly detailed analysis of the story as a whole; my analysis differs greatly from it, as regards both form and interpretation.

The form of "The Shot" has apparently seemed to most readers to be simple and easy. The center of narrative interest is...