Ivan Bunin, "Lapti": a summary of the story of life and death

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

Ivan Bunin, "Lapti" (a brief summary follows) is a short story with a seemingly unpretentious plot. However, Bunin's talent lies in the fact that when you read his works, you guess yourself or the story you heard just now with a tragic end …

Sometimes late in the evening, when it's completely dark, you go to the window, look out into the street, and there are hundreds of thousands of windows. Some of them are lit with a bright yellow light, others are dark, but each of them has its own story, its own story, its own plot develops …

So it is in Bunin's prose - gray everyday life with its curiosities and incidents. However, there is one “but” that cannot be expressed in one word, or even words. It reaches the very depths of the human soul and takes out something truly alive, real, something that you are afraid to miss, lose again in this thickness of misunderstanding, in an endless string of words and deeds. So..

Ivan Bunin, "Lapti"": summary

Winter. The fifth day is swept by an impenetrable blizzard and a blizzard. around neithersouls. Outside the windows of one farm house, grief settled - a child is seriously ill. Despair, fear and helplessness seized the mother's heart. The husband is away, there is no way to get to the doctor, and he himself will not be able to get there in such weather. What to do?

There was a knock in the hallway. It was Nefed who brought the straw for the stove. After a minute or two he looked into the room to ask about the he alth of the child. It turned out that the boy is very weak, he is on fire, most likely he will not survive, but the main thing is that he keeps talking about some red bast shoes in delirium, asking for them…

Without hesitation, Nefed goes to the neighboring village for new bast shoes and for magenta - red paint: if he asks, then the soul desires, and one must certainly go and get …

The night passed in anxious anticipation.

In the morning there was an ominous knock on the window. They were men from a neighboring village. They brought back the frozen body of Nefed. They discovered it by accident, when they themselves fell into a snow pit, and already despaired of escaping. But, seeing the stiff body of Nefed, whom they knew, they realized that the farm was very close. They strained their last strength and reached the people.

Behind the belt, under the man's sheepskin coat, there were new children's sandals and a bottle of fuchsin. This is how the story (by I. A. Bunin) “Bastes” ends, the summary of which was outlined above.

Main thought: “Bastes”, Bunin I. A

Last sentence, period, end of story. While reading this or that work, we are more passionate about the plot than what is hidden behind the words and actions of the main characters. However, then they comehundreds of thoughts: why, for what, why … The story written by Ivan Bunin - "Bastes" - is, first of all, an ode to extraordinary kindness and readiness for self-sacrifice. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, the first layer that suggests digging further and discovering new and unexpected riches. What else is hidden behind the “settings” of the unfolding drama?

A merciless element rules outside the window, ready to destroy anyone who dares to oppose it. On the threshold is death, which is waiting in the wings without pity and unnecessary doubts. The inconsolable mother humbly freezes before her. And only Nefed shows determination to resist these two inevitability and follow the dictates of the soul.

And at this moment the reader is overcome by feelings that are difficult to put into words. As if a thin thread of light, something inexplicable, and at the same time painfully familiar, penetrates, passes through and connects souls, destinies and circumstances together. Nefed does not try to explain his, at first glance, extravagant desire to go for bast shoes in an impenetrable snowstorm and snowstorm. He knows one thing - the soul desires, and here it is a sin to argue and argue. The question arises - whose soul called him on the road: the dying boy, the inconsolable mother, himself or those lost men? Absurd, and somewhere even stupid, it would seem, the death of Nefed becomes significant, and, one might say, a necessary sacrifice. She gave the right to life to those lost peasants from the neighboring village, and maybe even to a child.

Once again I would like to remind you what this story is called, whichwrote Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, "Lapti". The summary, of course, cannot convey all the subtlety and depth of feelings of the main characters, so reading the original is simply necessary.