Pushkin’s The Snowstorm shows us a completely different side of Pushkin, than what we’ve previously seen. In reading works like “Echo”, “Sing not, my love…”, “Autumn,” and “The Hills of Georgia,” we gained an appreciation for Pushkin’s ability to find beauty in every-day imagery. I perceived him as a very classically romantic poet. However, now as we read The Snowstorm, Pushkin seems like an unfamiliar and different writer altogether: a comedian!

To me it seems that Pushkin colors The Snowstorm in a comical way, through the narrator’s sarcasm, and through the inconsistent passage of time through the piece.  (Although it’s possible that I read the whole story in the wrong tone,) I got the sense that the narrator himself leads us to ridicule some of the story line. In the very first paragraph, he chooses to carry us down a logical, yet silly progression, beginning with Gavrila Gavrilobich R—-, then jumping to his “kindheartedness”, to the neighbors who “play ‘Boston’ at five copecks with his wife”, and finally to the true protagonist of the story Marya Gavrilovna.  She “had been brought up on French novels, and consequently was in love” (488). This odd progression to  to an introduction to Marya’s love (the centerpiece of the plot), seems to poke fun, both at the French novels, and perhaps even at the legitimacy of Marya’s love. As he carries on, the narrator still presents Masha’s love in such a way that we are (or at least I am) not fully convinced about her true commitment to him. She “urged the invincible strength of passion as an excuse for the step she was taking” in her letter to her parents. An “excuse” is far from a reason!

The other thing that I found odd, and thus took as a sort of humor, was the varying passage of time. There is the jump from focusing on Masha to Vladimir, which is key to the story’s ultimate “punchline.” However, beyond that, some passages are in real-time, while others jump from 2 weeks to multiple years. These sudden jumps seemed disjointed and thus, comical to me. It seems like Pushkin takes on a completely different writing style, through the use of this narrator character.

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A completely different topic that I would talk more about with space: the difference in the “use” of snow across the different works today. In this work, the snow storm is like a blank page itself, which enables a completely unexpected storyline to take place.