Hero of our time: Fatalist. Summary

Lermontov’s novel “The Hero of Our Time” concludes with a chapter entitled “The Fatalist”. A summary of the work first requires a description of the scene of the painting. Near the Cossack village, where Pechorin lived for some time, there was an infantry battalion. In the evenings, officers often gathered in the apartment of one or the other of them for playing cards.

Once, resting from a boring game, they started a philosophical debate. The subject was the Muslim faith that the fate of everyone is written in heaven, and, as it turned out, many Christians share this opinion. Among the players was a man who had a special passion for the game, a Serb, Lieutenant Vulich. Being brave and sharp enough by nature, he offers not to argue in vain, but in fact to check whether a person can manage his own life and destiny. Officer Wulich is a fatalist. The summary of his speech has an unambiguous meaning: if he is not destined to die today, then the gun attached to his forehead will not fire. Of all those present, he agreed to bet with him only Pechorin, who believes that it is impossible to predetermine fate in advance.

The inevitability of fate

The lieutenant removes the first pistol from the wall, charges it and presents it to the head. At this time, Pechorin thinks that he sees the seal of death on the face of a Serb, and he warns Vulich that he will die today. To which he hears the philosophical answer: "Maybe, yes, maybe no ...". A shot sounds, the gun misfires. Raising the trigger again, Wulich fires a second shot at the hat hanging on the wall, and this time after the smoke has cleared, a gaping hole opens for everyone. Pechorin already doubts his visions and, returning home, discusses the ancestors, the arbiters of fate in heaven and that this Serb-fatalist may not be so wrong. The summary of the chapter will then still reveal the correctness of Pechorin's visions. In the morning it becomes known about the death of Vulich: he was hacked off by a drunk Cossack on his way home. And to the question of the lieutenant to the fugitive Cossack about whom he was looking for, as a sentence, the answer mystically sounded: “You!”.

Testing your fate by Pechorin

Another, no less revealing, scene will end our summary. A fatalist is a person convinced of the inevitability, and when Pechorin opens up the prospect of trying his own fate, he does not think long. The assassin of Vulich hid in a house on the outskirts, and it was almost impossible to rescue him alive. Then his crazy plan matures in Pechorin’s head. The young man, hiding behind the shutters, climbs through the window and disarms the Cossack. But he first manages to shoot, a bullet flies by. After such events, you involuntarily begin to understand that somewhere deep down in your soul you are also a little fatalist. The summary continues Pechorin’s reasoning that, not knowing what awaits you, you are much bolder in your advance, that there is nothing worse than death, and it is inevitable. When he returns to the fortress and talks with Maxim Maksimych about what happened, the head-captain expresses the idea that, apparently, it was written in kind by Vulich, but he is still sorry.

Under mysterious circumstances, returning from Persia, the hero of our time also perishes. The “fatalist”, a brief summary of the chapter, dimly conveys all the thoughts and reasoning of the main characters, in fact this part is very capacious and deep, making you think that a person is the master of his own fate.