I was required to read a story of Tolstoy’s for one of my classes earlier in the semester, and I fell in love with his writing style. I also fell in love with that fact that he was adopted by the ‘common’ people during the Russian revolution. What made this man’s work so emotional for a huge amount of people?
The more I read him, the more I understand. How Much Land Does a Man Need was my most recent read out of my collection of him. I wanted to recommend it to everyone. Even people who don’t read much can appreciate the surface-deep message in the title alone.
Tolstoy was Christian, and he has themes leading back to the teachings of Jesus. The idea of ‘give up everything to follow me’ is strong and the funny yet dark presence of the ‘devil’ gives you the realization that religion was a basis for this piece of work. However, the devil plays the role he was meant for in the beginning, he is there to test and tempt, not to do bad things.
The main character of Pahom, a poor farmer, makes a comment that tempts the devil to test him. The Devil believes that if Pahom was to become rich with land, he will have control over the man. With the help of an invisible devil the farmer becomes slowly wealthier. The reader is lead to question if this is really a good thing or not fairly quickly as a theme of dark laughter ensues and greed takes over.
By the end of the story I was questioning belongings and capitalism more than usual. Tolstoy does a fantastic job at presenting this social critique to us through this story. Do you really need more than the bare minimums, or are people in a capitalistic society just greedy and over-zealous about their wants? It made it very easy to see why he was adopted by the ‘commoners’.
I would enjoy hearing other people’s thoughts about this story, and I hope people enjoy it as much as I did.
-Caseylink to the story: http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2738/
link to Tolstoy's wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy
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