Literature and Your Life
Reader’s response Do you sympathize with Pahom?
We don’t sympathize with him because we think that we should be happy with the things we have, even if we don’t have much. And if we want more we could get it little by little, not making more than our body can handle.
Thematic Focus Ultimately, Pahom pays for “success” with life. What price are you willing to pay for success?
We think that we will do anything we can to get success, but taking into account that they’re not things that hurt us.
Questions for Research Like Pahom, many people find themselves always wanting something more to make them happy. With a group of classmates, write a questionnaire that could be used to interview people about happiness.
Explain and define what happiness means to you in your life.
How important to you is achieving happiness in your life?
How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
How much time are you able to spend doing the kinds of things that you enjoy?
Do you enjoy the everyday things in life?
Do you think that if you had more money you would be happier?
Check Your Comprehension
What does Pahom believe is the only trouble that peasants face?
Their lack of land.
How does Pahom come to buy his first parcel of land?
A woman was selling some land.
List three problems Pahom experiences as he increases his land and holdings.
The first problem that Pahom experiences is that other peasants allow their animals to graze on his land without permission.
When he moves to a new town, Pahom finds trouble with renting others' land, which moves him to seek out his own land to purchase again.
In the end, he died wanting more land.
How do the Bashkirs determine how much land a man can own?
The Bashkir elder offers Pakhom as much land as he can travel over in one day for a set price of one thousand roubles.
Briefly summarize what happened on the last day of Pahom’s life.
He walked too far to get more land and then he died because of exhaustion.
Critical Thinking
INTERPRET
How and why does Pahom’s attitude toward his first plot of land change?
He became more greedy and wanted more of anything; own land-no debts.
How do Pahom’s and the Bashkir’s attitudes toward landownership differ?
The Bashkirs didn't care about building wealth.
How does the last sentence in the story reflect the message that answers the title question?
Because at the end, Pahom died and couldn’t get any land. So to bury him, he only needed six feet from his head to his toes.
EVALUATE
Explain whether you think that most people would behave as Pahom does if they were out in his situation.
We think that yes. In today's society, people are always wanting more and more, and sometimes they don’t even care about the damage they can cause.
Reading Strategy
Identify two things Pahom said or did that helped you predict he would try to take more land than he should have taken from the Bashkirs.
He wanted to go further to have more land and when he was about to turn back, he perceived a damp hollow and thought it would be a pity to leave it out.
Did you predict the story’s ending? Did you find it satisfying? Surprising? Explain.
Yes and no. We thought that Pahom would die, but we didn’t think that it was going to be that way.
Literary Focus
What is the lesson that Tolstoy’s parable teaches?
Excessive desire can make a person lose all they have.
Parables are often used as a means of moral instruction. How might “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” be used for this purpose?
We think that this story is instructing us to always be grateful for what we have and if we want more, try to get it but not harm ourselves by going beyond our limit.
Build Vocabulary
Choose a word from the Word Bank to complete each sentence.
The landowner stormed into the house, holding a sheaf of bills in his hands.
His mind has gone aggrieved; he hasn’t read a book in a month.
Choose the word from the Word Bank that best fits each sentence.
Although the area used to be a desert, irrigation made the land arable.
Pahom’s sister-in-law forbore the country ways.
The piqued peasants complained to the landowner.
Pahom was disparaged by his neighbor’s inconsiderate behavior.
Build Grammar Skills
Pahom’s heart kindled with desire.
He gave away about one hundred rubles’ worth of silk robes and carpets.
It was the Bashkirs’ custom to sell land by the day.
The chief’s real identity is revealed at the end of the story.
By Andrea Parra and
Laura Rodríguez,
Step 10 Blue
