SOURCE: "The Execution of Captain Mironov: A Crossing of the Tragic and Comic Modes," in Alexander Puskin: Symposium II, Slavica Publishers, Inc., 1980, pp. 67-78.

In the following essay, Debreczeny considers the place of Captain Mironov's tragic execution in the otherwise comic The Captain's Daughter.

The Captain's Daughter (1836), even though its action is set in the midst of a bloody revolt, contains surprisingly little violence. Grinev's prophetic nightmare foreshadows a massacre, but only in a remote manner. Grinev is wounded quite seriously in his duel with Švabrin, but his wound turns out to be a blessing, for he awakes to find himself in the tender care of Maša. The first physical marks of cruelty appearing in the novel are the traces of torture on the body of the captive Bashkir; similar tokens of savage governmental repression are brought to our attention at the beginning of Chapter Ten as...