SOURCE: "A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The Unity and the Shape of The Tales of Belkin," in Slavic Review, Vol. 30, No. 4, December, 1971, pp. 748-61.

In the following essay, Gregg analyzes the individual stories of Pushkin's Tales of Belkin, noting structural and thematic elements in the tales that unify the work as a whole.

Pushkin's Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin are five in number, and four of them ("The Shot," "The Blizzard," "The Stationmaster," and "The Lady-Peasant") belong to the same literary species. The narrative features binding this quartet of stories together are, in the main, conventional. Each relates—among other things—the story of a young man who, having won the affections of a beautiful woman, overcomes some obstacle (or series of obstacles) which threatens their union, thereby paving the way to, or consolidating, a manage d'amour at the end of the tale. All of which...