N.V. Gogol "Terrible revenge": a summary of the work

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

In 1831, Gogol wrote the story "Terrible Revenge". A summary of the work is given in this article. This creation of the famous author is included in the collection of his stories “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”. Reading this work, it can be noted that it has much in common with the plot of Gogol's mystical story "Viy": the key figures of the stories are fabulous creatures from ancient folk legends.

N. V. Gogol. "Terrible revenge" (summary). Intro

Esaul Gorobets celebrated his son's wedding in Kyiv. It had many guests. Among the visitors was his named brother Danila Burulbash with his beautiful wife Katerina, who was considered an orphan. Her mother died and her father disappeared. When miraculous icons were taken out of the house to bless the young, it turned out that there was a sorcerer among the guests. He gave himself away by being afraid of the holy images and disappeared.

N. V. Gogol. "Terrible revenge" (summary). Developments

After the wedding, Danila was returning home with his young wife. The people said that his father Katerina was an evil sorcerer who sold his soul to the devil. He recently showed up in their family. The young father-in-law did not like him, quarrels often broke out between them. Rumors circulated around the farm that as soon as Katerina's father showed up, strange things began to happen here: either the crosses in the cemetery sway, or the dead rise from the graves, that their groans are heard at midnight. Not far from the village stood the family castle of the sorcerer, where he once lived. Curiosity took Danila, and he decided to go to this lair of the devil in order to see with his own eyes what was happening there. In the evening, climbing a tall oak tree, the young man sees that a light is on in the old castle, that his father-in-law enters and begins to tell fortunes. The sorcerer changes in appearance and summons the soul of Katerina's daughter, persuading her to love him. Seeing all this, Danila returns home and tells Katerina about everything. She, in turn, renounces her father. In the morning, the son-in-law accuses his father-in-law of friendship with the Poles who attacked his homeland, but not of witchcraft. For this, Katerina's father is put in prison. He is facing the death pen alty. He asks his daughter to forgive him and release him. Katerina. Taking pity on his father, he opens the bars and releases the sorcerer to freedom. Meanwhile, Danila goes to war with the Poles and dies there. The sorcerer's bullet overtook him. Katerina is inconsolable when she learns of her husband's death. She is terribly worried about the life of her little son. But also hisruined by an evil sorcerer, casting an evil spell. A woman wakes up in the middle of the night to find her baby dead in her bed.

She is going crazy with grief. Since then, the inhabitants of the farm began to see a vision, as if a gigantic rider on a black horse was galloping among the Carpathian Mountains. The hero's eyes are closed, he holds a baby in his hands. And poor Katerina is looking for her father to kill him for all the misfortunes that he caused her. One day, a wanderer appears to her, who persuades her to become his wife. She recognizes him as a sorcerer and rushes at him with a knife. But the father manages to kill his daughter.

N. V. Gogol "Terrible revenge" (summary). Ending

The sorcerer runs from these places where the vision with the horseman appeared. He clearly knows who this giant is, and why he showed up here. The old man runs to the old schemer to pray for his sins. But he refuses to do so, and the sorcerer kills him. Now, wherever this son of the devil goes, the road leads him to the Carpathians, where his horseman with the baby is waiting for him. Nowhere to hide him from this giant. The rider opened his eyes and laughed. The sorcerer died at that hour and fell into the abyss, where the dead plunged their teeth into him so that he would suffer. This old story ends with a song performed by an old bandura player in the city of Glukhov. It tells the story of two brothers Peter and Ivan. Ivan once distinguished himself in the war, for which he was generously awarded. Despite what he shared with his brother, Peter became jealous of him and decided to kill him. He pushed Ivan with his little son into the abyss, and took his good for himself.

When a good brother ended up in the Kingdom of Heaven, God allowed his soul to choose the punishment for his killer. Ivan cursed all the offspring of a blood relative and predicted to him that the last of his kind would be a terrible villain. The soul of the deceased will appear from the other world and cast the terrible sinner into the abyss, where all his dead ancestors will gnaw at him. Peter wants to take revenge on his brother, but he will not be able to get up from the ground. The Lord was surprised at such a terrible punishment, but commanded that it be so.

That's how Gogol twirled the plot. "Terrible revenge" (a summary of the story is given in this article) is one of the less popular works of the master. It is not studied at school in literature lessons. But for us, this story is of folklore interest. It is based on real ancient folk tales. It is not for nothing that in the first edition the work was sub titled “Ancient True Story”. That is how N. V. Gogol described him. "Terrible Revenge" is a story written over a century and a half ago. But even now we are reading it with trepidation and interest.