52 pages • 1 hour read
Leo TolstoyHow Much Land Does a Man Need
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1886A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Envy, Greed, and Loss
Pahóm works hard as a peasant tilling the land; the only thing that bothers him, setting the entire plot in motion, is his desire for more land. At first, there seems to be nothing wrong with this desire to have a little more (the Devil’s declaration in Part 1 not withstanding), and his ambition to become a landowner is understandable. He merely hopes to prosper—to improve his lot in life. A warning note, however, is sounded in Part 2, when the lady landowner sells her land. When the peasants decide to buy the land individually, Pahóm hears that one of his neighbors is buying 50 acres, and he “[feels] envious” (209). Pahóm fears that other people are getting ahead of him. After he has purchased some land, he quarrels with his neighbors. There are even threats to burn his building down, which never happened when he did not have much property. A pattern begins to emerge: “[T]hough Pahóm had more land, his place in the Commune was much worse than before” (212).
Each gain in land coincides with a loss in some other area of life. Often the loss is of peace of mind. For example, Pahóm convinces himself that his present location is too crowded and that he is too cramped to be comfortable. When he hears about settlement beyond the Volga, “his heart kindle[s] with desire” (213). He prospers there for a while and might have continued to be content were it not for the fact that he tires of having to rent property and compete with other peasants for it. If he owned land, he would not be so dependent on others, he thinks, and they would not be able to interfere with his plans. He does not realize that in trying to free himself from the influence of others he is gradually becoming enslaved to his own envy and greed. Greed is a desire for something that is unrelated to actual need, but it has its own momentum: The more land he acquires, the more anxious he becomes. In his final, tragic venture, when he is on the brink of acquiring the largest amount of land he has ever owned, his anxiety reaches fever pitch as he realizes that he may fail to accomplish his goal. Ultimately, his greed costs him everything he has—his own life.
Temptation and the Deadly Sins
Pahóm believes that his actions, successes, and failures are his own. He is ignorant of the fact that he has an antagonist: the Devil. Unfortunately for Pahóm, the Devil overhears him boasting about not fearing the Devil himself, and he decides to lay a trap for Pahóm in order to exert his power over the peasant, tempting Pahóm by granting him his desire. He is also working on a wider scale: When in Part 2 the peasants cannot agree on a collective plan to purchase the lady’s property, it is because “the Evil One sowed discord among them” (209). Pahóm’s dream reveals the truth of the situation. The laughing figure he sees keeps changing, from the Chief, to the dealer, to the peasant, and finally to the Devil himself, who presides over Pahóm’s own dead body. However, Pahóm does not realize that the dream means that the Devil was the one lying behind the actions of all the other men.
Nevertheless, it is significant that the original boast was Pahóm’s. The Devil does not make Pahóm sinful but plays on his preexisting pride and greed, trusting that these qualities will fester if Pahóm gets his wish. This suggests an innate human tendency toward evil and perhaps explains why the Devil is in Pahóm’s house at the beginning of the story: He is there because the capacity for evil is always present. This lends an additional irony to Pahóm’s wife’s words about the temptations of life in the city. While she is right to note that the material pleasures of the city can corrupt people, she is wrong to think it is possible to avoid temptation; if anything, the sense of superiority she and Pahóm feel is a temptation in and of itself.
The Devil’s presence in this story places it loosely within a Christian framework. Christianity teaches that the Devil is a real entity who tempts people into sin. He is described in the New Testament’s gospel of John as “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). In this case, the Devil encourages Pahóm in his basic misconception: that having more land will make him happy and secure. Envy and greed are sins in Christian teaching, so Pahóm’s unrepentant indulgence in them has likely condemned his soul to hell.
Contentment and Community
While Pahóm is increasingly mired in his greed and acquisitiveness regarding owning land, the Bashkir people present a complete contrast. They live in felt-covered tents and do not cultivate the land. They own cattle and sheep that graze on the steppe (flat grassland). They milk the cows, from which they make a drink called kumiss, and they spend their days drinking this and tea, eating mutton, and playing their pipes: “[A]ll summer long they never thought of doing any work” (217). The Bashkirs are amiable and friendly and seem to have no cares; they are content. Although they occupy some prime land, the Bashkirs do not seem to care who owns it. They will sell large tracts of it at a very cheap price to anyone who comes along. Indeed, they care so little about the dimensions of their land that they do not have the means to measure it, which is why they sell it by the “day”—meaning as much as a man can cover on foot in a day, from sunrise to sunset.
Lacking the materialism that drives Pahóm, the Bashkirs also seem to lack his propensity for interpersonal strife. Pahóm frequently justifies his desire for more land by complaining that his current situation is too “crowded”; he feels that if he could only secure some unspecified amount of property, he could insulate himself from annoyances like trespassers. The reality is just the reverse, as expanding his holdings only gives Pahóm additional reason to suspect and disdain others, and he becomes ever more isolated. By contrast, the Bashkirs live in harmony with one another. Since they share the land, they have no reason to hold themselves apart from or above one another, and their society is only loosely hierarchical; though the Chief makes the final decision about whether to sell land to Pahóm, there is some initial question of whether it is even necessary to consult him. When Pahóm goes to stake his claim, the Bashkirs wait at the starting place as a group, apparently regarding it as a community event.
The Bashkirs likely find it hard to understand a man like Pahóm. When he makes it clear that he would like to buy some of their land, they talk among themselves, and Pahóm, who does not speak their language, observes that they are amused and that they shout and laugh a lot. For Pahóm, this matter of the land is serious business, but the Bashkirs treat it with lightheartedness. They would have much to teach Pahóm about how to live in a way that nourishes life rather than stifles it, but due to Pahóm’s folly, his acquaintance with them is all too brief.
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