The article comprehends the interpretative levels of the literary text, dominant issues, ideological content, evaluates the key images-symbols indicated in Boris Chipchikov's story "Fish spawned in the moonlight". The conceptual core of the work is the idea of inner freedom, the manifestation of a person's spiritual core in the whirlwind of life's vicissitudes. The paper analyzes the structural and content layers of the work, determines the author's intention - the creative intent of the writer, aimed at reflecting the underside of historical events and human souls, the motivation of the actions of the heroes, the correlation of reality in individual perception and the actual state of things. This allows to unpack the deep meanings of the text, to identify inversions and distortions that disfigure human consciousness (the result of the influence of the social environment, the generation of ideological oppression), to demonstrate the power of an individual towering above the surrounding chaos (by the example of the main character of the story Maryam). The role of conceptual metaphors in understanding these meanings is significant. The motif of loneliness and alienation is defined as the dominant line of the story, revealed through metaphorical parallels (fish swimming to spawn; a snake crawling into a cave; spiders in human form; an iron fetus growing in the womb; dancing shadows - a grotesque image, the juxtaposition of night and day, houses and dwellings). In the content of the work, the emphasis on ideological questions about the essence of faith, the writer's attitude to religious attributes, etc. is important. In the article was characterized the stylistic features of B. Chipchikov's prose, the author's predilection (as a follower of the postmodern artistic tradition) for citations and allusions is noted.