The plot of the story is simple enough, the boys on vacation in a
pioneer camp tell terrible stories to each other. During the discussion, the teenagers ask questions about the meaning of existence, life and death, but the answers to the questions raised are ambiguous. Confronted with "
philosophical and
mystical questions," the young narrator prepares for a literary encounter: he either recalls the encounter or contemplates the end of his "
horror story". Not named by name, the boy is noticeably different from the others: he participates in the entertainment against his will to dispel the oppressive atmosphere. The synthesis of the light coming from the electric light-the "blue lantern" - and from the moonlight brings to the story an element of mystery characteristic of
postmodernism. The blue color is identified in the narrative with something scary and frightening. After one of the stories, the youngest in the group, Kolya, confusing play with reality, runs to the teacher in terror. The last story finally connects fiction with reality - the children in the ward finally fall asleep, just like the pioneers discussed in the sixth "story. Reality triumphs over the mystical, but the "eternal questions" (who we are, where we come from... where is the difference between life and death, who has the right to consider himself truly alive) remain unanswered (in the tradition of
Russian classical literature)". Particularly noteworthy is the "two-worldness" of the artistic picture of the world. The writer does not simply work with "ordinary" postmodern
simulacra. Next to the "real" worlds he creates there are "virtual" worlds, so that they interpenetrate into each other, one is replaced by the other, and as a result it becomes unclear which world is "real" and which is "virtual. It is as if Pelevin is playing with the reader in Postmodernist games, riddles, creating additional difficulties for the perception and interpretation of the test. ==References==