The Shot of His Life

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I briefly heard the thud of hooves, followed by the loud crack of a tree branch. I thought my shot had been on target, but the miss had severely shaken my confidence. I walked straight to where the deer had been standing. I found hoof prints, oak leaves churned up from under the snow and the first bright, red signs of a hit. I tracked it for only about 40 yards before the trail abruptly ended. A few moments of near panic ensued as I tried to figure out which way it had gone.

Even before I spotted it, I could smell the musky odor of a rutting buck. I looked down the bank and saw it. I said a quick prayer of thanks and prepared to get to work.

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I knew it was a nice deer as I noted its nine antler points and thick, rugged body. But my relative inexperience did not allow me to appreciate its size. First, access during the field-dressing process seemed a bit more difficult than usual. And dragging the deer nearly half a mile, even with snow covering the ground on a clear trail, was exhausting. Upon arriving, I had to get the deer into a Subaru Forester by myself.

Thankfully, a borrowed plastic sled enabled me to lift and push it into the back. I shared my news with the landowner via text message and called my buddies John Holyoke and Chris Lander.

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Once it was registered, we headed out to the scale. We slid the deer and sled onto the ground. John asked what my guess was, and I said probably pounds. After a while, his neighbors arrive, in particular a beautiful young countess, and the narrator visits them soon after. On the wall he notices a painting of a Swiss landscape with two bullet holes on top of each other. The narrator, seeing this, tells his neighbor about a man he knew in the army who was an extraordinary shot, and tells the Count of Silvio. The Count is overcome with fear, and begins to tell the narrator that he was Silvio's opponent, and shortly after his wedding Silvio claimed his right fire his response shot.

The Count describes that Silvio chooses not shoot the unarmed Count, rather he wants to draw lots for a new duel. The Count again draws the right to shoot first, but is nervous and misses, and the bullet ends up in the painting of a Swiss landscape. As Silvio aims to shoot, the Countess enters the room. Silvio takes pity on her and instead of firing upon the Count, shoots the painting in almost exactly the same spot as the Count.

Silvio again spares the Count's life, yet he demonstrates how easily he could have killed the Count. Knowing he could have killed the Count, Silvio satisfies his conscience, and proceeds leave the house never to be seen again. We learn later that Silvio was killed leading a regiment in battle in the Greek Revolution, in combat against Ottoman forces. Though it may not appear to be the most obvious genre, Pushkin in fact is writing mostly satirically through his construction of The Shot.

In the sense of parody, Pushkin focuses on the nature of characters to focus on tradition and honor and how that falls apart throughout the tale. This is observable at the end as well when the Count turns to the man that Silvio once was, one who would not die with honor, therefore switching their places in an honorable society while marking both of the changes they undergo.

The narrator of The Shot relates the events that take place in this story from a first person perspective.

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There is not much information revealed about the narrator, as the focus of the story is on Silvio. He lives in a military outpost in the rural village of N. He is an infantry officer, and often spent time with Silvio, either having dinner or gambling. After Silvio does not challenge the officer who offended him to a duel, the narrator cannot forget this episode, and is unable to stop considering why Silvio did not duel him. After Silvio announces his departure, the narrator stays after dinner to hear his explanation for not dueling the other officer.

He learns that when Silvio served in the X. Hussar Regiment, he dueled another man, but did not take his shot, because he could tell that the other man did not care. Several years later, the narrator lived in a poor village in P. He managed his estate, and yearned for his old, simpler existence.

During his second year at the estate, a wealthy couple who lived nearby were coming to visit their estate. This was an exciting prospect, and he planned on going to pay his respects. When they arrive, the narrator goes to meet them, and was very impressed by the Count and Countess and their estate. He notices two bullet holes in the painting of a Swiss landscape, and remarks that whoever made them must be very talented. The Count then tells him the story of those bullet holes, and the narrator learns that this was the Count who twice engaged in a duel with Silvio.

Silvio is a retired military officer living in the Russian provinces. The Shot is centered around Silvio and his obsessive desire for revenge on The Count. The narrator befriends him, and Silvio explains to him the history between himself and The Count. Silvio is pensive and careful throughout the story, undisturbed by anything that does not involve the Count. We learn at the end of the story that after the final shot, Silvio returned to the military and was killed in battle. As the antagonist to Silvio, the Count emerges as the person who sent Silvio's life into a spiral with his involvement in the same military regiment as Silvio.

By causing Silvio's jealousy, he also reveals the weakness behind Silvio's character and how weak the perceived sense of honor could be in military Russia. The Count is the tool that Pushkin uses to show how weak people in society are and how easy to change they can be. The Count forces Silvio to learn more about himself and how he perceives himself, but is also strong enough to force him into madness. He later in the story is put in the same position as Silvio once was but ends up being allowed to live because his wife, the Countess, begs for him.

I was working on the edge. This is the morning after a night that left four men dead and 10 wounded.

It was heavy fighting, and I was very afraid. You see movies, you read books, you can imagine anything. But when you are in front of something, it's not like the movies. As soon as it was light, I took pictures. He has fought all night long. I was the only witness. I got into Ajdabiya shortly after its fall.

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The rebels had just moved in and the locals were going crazy, shooting in the air. Bodies of pro-Gaddafi soldiers were lying around, beginning to stink as the sun got higher. Suddenly this guy jumped on to it. I'm not that interested in pictures of tanks burning — I'm interested in people.

I got as close as possible, within metres, and started shooting, counting to five in my head. I had seen corpses, torn apart, in the morgue and didn't want to end up like that. I was very much a novice when I took this. I'd just finished a master's in photojournalism and thought I'd go to Pakistan to cover the elections. I was about 15 metres away, photographing Bhutto, when there was a burst of gunfire followed by an explosion.

I had a split-second decision to risk a secondary blast as had happened in October or start running with the crowd. I was terrified and sickened, but kept telling myself just to concentrate and get it done so I could leave. The epicentre of the explosion was a pile of maybe a dozen limbless, charred, mangled bodies in pools of blood. This was over in seconds, but a firefight can go on for hours. The real worry is IEDs, though — when you go on patrol, every step could be your last. I'm 33 and I'm not sure I'd want to put myself in such risky situations when I'm older and perhaps have other people to consider.

I'd been embedded with US troops in Nuristan for five weeks when we went to help a unit that had been ambushed nearby.

There were bodies on the road, dead and dying. Taliban started shooting down on us from the mountains. By that point I'd accepted that I was going to get shot. There were so many bullets in the air, it sounded like a swarm of bees. The bullet went through my ribs and out of my lower back. The entry wound was the size of a penny; the exit bigger than the palm of my hand. The pain was overwhelming. I was convinced I was going to die and felt angry with myself.

It was 25 minutes before anybody could get to me. My cameras were on the ground, and as they grabbed me I had to lean down and pick them up. When we got to the local base, a medic said, "Hell, I can see right through you. I love my job but getting shot made me think about life beyond work. This photograph was the most dangerous moment in my career.

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I started when I was When you're younger, you're immortal. I'm more scared now, more aware of the risks. I've lost a lot of friends and colleagues — two of them very recently. I'll keep doing the job I do but I'll be more careful. There were numerous firefights going on between the pro-Timorese Aitarak and the Indonesian militia, so I just ran. Moments later he was lying in a 20ft stream of blood. The military were very unhappy with the pictures afterwards. While I was out in Afghanistan, my wife had a miscarriage and she equated it to my being away.

It was one of the most intense experiences I've ever had. I was with a lead unit of marines, and we received a triple ambush from the insurgents.

I'd just run across a street with 40 marines to take shelter in an Islamic cultural centre, with bullets whizzing past my face. I thought, if I'm going to die right now, I might as well be working. The guy in the photo is shouting, "Don't take my fucking picture! There are very few pictures where you get a feel for how fucking awful it is, how desperate and urgent.

I like that it's not a clean picture, that it's not well composed and you can't see everything that's happening.

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That's part of it.

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