Introduction and chapter 1 Summary and Analysis

Introduction: Bloom says that short stories can have a powerful effect in spite of their brevity. He says that we ask short stories for closure in a way that is different from novels or parables. Bloom says that Edgar Allan Poe recommends reading a short story in one sitting, and Bloom lists the authors whose works he will discuss.

Ivan Turgenev: In Ivan Turgenev's "Bezhin Lea", Turgenev himself is out hunting when he runs into peasants who believe in goblins. One youth, Pavlusha, is courageous and brazen in how he stares at Turgenev, and Turgenev says that Pavlusha died years later in a fall from a horse. Bloom says that we read "Bezhin Lea" in order "to know better our own reality, our vulnerability to fate." (p. 33). He says that Turgenev refrains from moral judgments, and does...