: The officer decided to try his luck and shot himself from a randomly selected pistol, but the weapon misfired. That evening, the officer died, hacked down by a drunk Cossack. His friend realized that it was fate.
In the original, the narration is conducted on behalf of Pechorin in the form of entries in his diary.
Once, a battalion of Pechorin stood in one of the Cossack villages.
Grigory Pechorin - a young officer, exiled to serve in the Caucasus, smart, educated, with a contradictory character, disappointed in life, looking for thrills
In the evenings, the officers entertained themselves by playing cards. During one of them, a conversation began about fate - is it written in heaven or not, is human life and death predetermined? The conversation turned into an argument, the officers were divided into those who are for and those who are against.
One of the officers, Vulich, a passionate player and fatalist, suggested checking "whether a person can arbitrarily manage his life, or each of us has a fateful minute."
Vulich - an officer, a colleague of Pechorin, a tall dark-skinned brunette, reserved, gambling, cold-blooded, courageous
Pechorin made a bet, and Vulich agreed - if he was destined to die today, he would die, if not, he would survive.
Vulich picked up a gun at random, all those present froze - now something irreparable can happen. Pechorin thought he saw the seal of death in the eyes of Vulich. He told him about this: "You will die today." Wulich shot himself in the temple - a misfire! Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, glad that the gun was not loaded and no one was dead. But Vulich fired a shot to the side - a bullet pierced his cap on the wall, the gun was loaded. The stunned officers soon parted, but Pechorin did not understand why he still thought that Wulich should die today.
Often on the face of a person who is supposed to die in a few hours, there is some strange imprint of an inevitable fate, so it is difficult for ordinary eyes to make a mistake.
In the morning Pechorin was awakened with the news that they had found an officer who was hacked with a saber. It was Wulich. His death in the guise of a drunk Cossack with a saber found him on his way home. So Pechorin involuntarily predicted the fate of the unfortunate officer.
The Cossack killer was quickly found, he locked himself in a hut and was not going to give up, threatening to shoot. No one dared to break open the door and run into his bullet. A strange thought flashed across Pechorin: like Wulich, he decided to try his luck. Through the window he entered the house, the Cossack fired, but only Pechorin’s epaulette touched. The villagers arrived to help and twisted and stole the Cossack. Pechorin was honored as a real hero.
After this incident, Pechorin for a long time could not decide whether to be a fatalist, because not everything is as simple as it might seem.
Who knows for sure whether he is convinced of what or not? ..And how often do we take for conviction a deception of feelings or a blunder of reason! ..
Returning to the fortress, Pechorin told Maxim Maksimych about what had happened and asked if he believed in predestination.
Maxim Maksimych - an army officer of about fifty, a bachelor, kind, simple, honest
The headquarters captain, shaking his head significantly, suggested that the weapon often misfires, and the poor officer, of course, is a pity, but, see, it’s written in kind. That was the end of this conversation.
