You live in better style than we do, but though you often earn more than you need, you are very likely to lose all you have...our way is safer. Though a peasant's life is not a fat one, it is a long one. We shall never grow rich, but we shall always have enough to eat.
The younger sister, a peasant married to Pahom, asserts this conviction to her elder sister, a more affluent woman married to a merchant and living in a city. In her defense of peasantry, the younger sister disrupts pervasive notions that wealth is synonymous with security and safety. She recognizes that the elder sister lives in "better style"—that she has more access to glamorous material possessions and experiences. However, she claims that the upper class is very "likely to lose all you [they] have...our [the peasants’] way is safer," meaning that wealth is not a guarantee of stability. Instead, more comfort and security lies in peasantry, where individuals have fewer possessions to lose. The younger sister's comparison of the two milieus expresses the futility of chasing upward mobility: because status and wealth can abruptly be taken away from people, individuals are powerless in constructing and maintaining their own trajectories within punitive, unpredictable, and prevailing socioeconomic class structures. Moreover, her belief in the upper classes' instability foreshadows Pahom’s devolution into greedy and exploitative landowner—who indeed loses all he has.
As far as the men were concerned, drinking kumiss and tea, eating mutton, and playing on their pipes was all they [the Bashkirs] cared about. They were all stout and merry, and all the summer long they never thought of doing any work.
Here, the narrator describes the Bashkirs’ lifestyle and values to sharply magnify Pahom’s moral degradation throughout the story. Pahom has abandoned his family and previous communes out of sheer self-interest and greed. He no longer latches on to ideas of family and community—intangible markers of a rewarding, fulfilling life—and instead prioritizes the ownership of immensely sized estates and higher socioeconomic standing in turn.
Meanwhile, the narrative characterizes the Bashkirs as one large, carefree community. As a foil to Pahom, the Bashkirs are uninterested in work and land, preferring to spend their time leisurely, with kumiss, music, and socialization. The stark juxtaposition between Pahom and the Bashkirs’ values, motivations, and lifestyles pronounces the misery and tragedy of Pahom’s lonely, greedy existence—and thus further anticipates his undoing.
Our only trouble is that we haven’t land enough. If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!
After overhearing the sisters’ dispute over peasant and city lifestyles, Pahom begins to mourn his lack of land and becomes convinced that increased land ownership will protect him from the Devil, or evil and sin. Pahom’s postulation marks the incitement of his greed and insatiable desire for social and economic mobility, which escalates over the story’s events and ultimately leads to his downfall. Dramatic irony suffuses this quote: in subsequent paragraphs, the narrator reveals that the Devil himself overheard Pahom’s inner thoughts, vowing to use land to steer him into greed and sin. As such, we know Pahom is doomed from the beginning of the story, while Pahom continues to conflate land ownership with a meaningful life devoid of fear and sin—blissfully unaware of his forthcoming demise.
This quote also illustrates Pahom’s susceptibility to base his self-perception on others' opinions. While initially taking pride in the peasantry, he absorbs the elder sister’s praise of a relatively lavish lifestyle in an urban milieu, which prompts him to adopt the worldview expressed in this quote. Pahom’s impressionability and passivity prevent him from acting out of true free will as he chases after land and class ascension.
And then he saw that it was not the peasant either, but the Devil himself, with horns and hoofs, sitting there and chuckling, and before him lay a man barefoot, prostrate on the ground, with only trousers and a shirt on. And Pahom dreamt that he looked more attentively to see what sort of a man it was lying there, and he saw that the man was dead, and that it was himself!
Here, the narrator describes the disturbing contents of Pahom’s nightmare, culminating in the Devil laughing at Pahom's lifeless body. The imagery of the Devil standing over Pahom's corpse symbolizes the unsparing control and power the Devil, who orchestrates and fosters Pahom’s obsession with land ownership, holds over Pahom. The Devil's "chuckling" at Pahom suggests that Pahom is the target of one big, practical joke, ignorant of his position as a pawn in the Devil’s avaricious, tempted hands. The climax of the dream thus foreshadows Pahom’s lack of introspection and foresight to acknowledge his subservience to evil exterior forces. Even after waking up from this dream, Pahom does not dwell on, or even consider, what the dream may symbolically reveal about his life; instead, he eagerly wakes up the Bashkirs to announce his readiness to start mapping out land. Additionally, by featuring Pahom's dead body, the dream anticipates Pahom’s demise.
Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.
After the workman digs a small grave for Pahom, the narrator concludes the story with this ironic, poignant declaration. Pahom’s death tragically reveals how much land a man needs in life: just enough to bury him into the ground. Notably, the quote invokes verbal irony to illustrate the futility of chasing wealth and elite socioeconomic status. Pahom experiences severe tumult in his insatiable pursuit for property: he leaves his family, exploits peasants’ limited socioeconomic position and becomes a local pariah, and purchases hundreds of acres of land. However, his elaborate efforts merely amount to the burying of his corpse in a small grave, as opposed to a rejuvenating, fulfilling life. The understatement of the final line thus shows that no matter the level of material possessions or success we gain, we are all destined for the same fate: death.
Why should I suffer in this narrow hole, if one can live so well elsewhere? I will sell my land and my homestead here, and with the money I will start afresh over there and get everything new. In this crowded place one is always having trouble. But I must first go and find out all about it myself.
Pahom often attributes dissatisfaction with his properties to their perceived crowdedness, as shown in this quote. The motif of entrapment underscores Pahom’s fervent desire for a grander, more isolated freehold property. Pahom believes that his estate's spatial constraints prevent him from attaining independence, which he imagines achieving through massive, unlimited land ownership. This quote illuminates Pahom’s full immersion into conflating his free will and self-worth with material assets and wealth. With this, we know that Pahom’s quest for more land—and "start[ing] afresh"—is ultimately ill-fated: he will never attain the amount of land or freedom he thinks he needs. After becoming so enraptured with material gain, his greed and feelings of entrapment and inadequacy are perpetual and virulent.
But I should like to be sure which bit is mine. Could it not be measured and made over to me? Life and death are in God’s hands. You good people give it to me, but your children might wish to take it away again.
Pahom communicates his desire to secure a contract with the Bashkirs to formally ensure his ownership of their land, using the unpredictability of the future to support his preference. He specifically attributes humans' lack of autonomy in paving their own paths to mysterious acts of the divine: “Life and death are in God’s hands.” Throughout the story, Pahom is shown to be oblivious to the role the Devil—and the corrupting force of land transactions by extension—plays in limiting his free will in the chase for land and wealth. Notably, this quote marks a passing instance where Pahom acknowledges interfering exterior forces that can determine his fate and limit his autonomy. As such, the quote expands the scope of the story’s theme of human powerlessness: not only do economic systems hold ultimate control and domination over men, but so do acts of God.
