Literature and Your Life
Reader’s Response Do you sympathize with Pahom? Why or why not?
I don’t really sympathize with him. In some cases, it is good to not be a conformist and always be trying to be better and improve ourselves, but we also should be happy with the things we have and try to get where we want to be step by step, not to make more than we can handle.
Thematic Focus Ultimately, Pahom pays for “success” with his life. What price are you willing to pay for success?
Personally, I would love to be a successful person, but if success requires something that I know will hurt or harm me in some way, I wouldn’t take it. I’d try to find a better way.
Check Your Comprehension
1. What does Pahom believe is the only trouble that peasants face?
The lack of land.
2. How does Pahom come to buy his first parcel of land?
A woman was selling some.
3. List three problems Pahom experiences as he increases his land holdings.
Other peasants allowed their animals to graze on his land without permission.
When he moved, he found trouble with renting other people’s land, which moved him to seek out his own land to purchase again.
He died wanting more land.
4. How do the Bashkiria determine how much land a man can own?
The Bashkir offers Pahom as much land as he can travel over in one day for a set price of one thousand roubles.
5. Briefly summarize what happens on the last day of Pahom’s life.
He died out of exhaustion because he wanted more land.
Critical Thinking
INTERPRET
1. How and why does Pahom’s attitude toward his first plot of land change? [Analyze]
He became greedy and always wanted more.
2. How do Pahom’s and the Bashkirs attitudes toward landownership differ? [Compare and Contrast]
The Bashkirs didn’t care about wealth.
3. How does the last sentence in the story reflect the message that answers the title question? [Connect]
Because Pahom dies at the end without getting any more land. So, to bury him, he only needed six feet from his head to his toes.
EVALUATE
4. Explain whether you think that most people would behave as Pahom does if they were out in his situation. [Make a Judgment]
People are always wanting more and don’t value the things they can afford and their present, without caring about the damage it can cause.
EXTEND
5. (a) Name one other character you know from literature who, like Pahom, is never satisfied with what he or she has. (b) What happens to this character? [Literature Link]
(a) When I read this story I instantly thought about Stephen King’s book “1922” character named Wilfred James. (b) This man had a wife who owned the land her father left her when he died and when she wanted to sell it because she wanted a life in the city, he manipulated their son against his mother and killed her. Eventually, Wilfred’s son dies and their revengeful spirits kill him, leaving him with nothing.
Reading Strategy
PREDICT BASED ON CHARACTER TRAITS
2. Did you predict the story’s ending? Did you find it satisfying? Surprising? Explain.
Actually, no. I wasn’t really expecting anything, but Pahom dying wasn’t even on the list.
Literary Focus
PARABLE
1. What is the lesson that Tolstoy’s parable teaches?
Excessive craving can make you lose everything.
2. Parables are often used as a means of moral instruction. How might “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” be used for this purpose?
I feel this story is trying to teach us or instruct us that we have to be grateful for what we have right now. It is very important to fight for what we want but without reaching that limit of whim or greed.
Build Vocabulary
USING WORDS IN CONTEXT
1. The landowner stormed into the house, holding a sheaf of bills in his hand.
2. His mind has gone aggrieved; he hasn’t read a book in a month.
USING THE WORD BANK
1. Although the area used to be a desert, irrigation made the land arable.
2. Pahom’s sister-in-law forbore the country ways.
3. The piqued peasants complained to the landowner.
4. Pahom was disparaged by his neighbor’s inconsiderate behavior.
Build Grammar Skills
POSSESSIVE NOUNS
Practice
1. Pahom’s heart kindled with desire.
2. He gave away about one hundred rubles’ worth of silk robes and carpets.
3. It was the Bashkirs’ custom to sell land by the day.
4. The chief’s real identity is revealed at the end of the story.