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Unit 6: How Much Land Does a Man Need by Leo Tolstoy

the people and Tolstoy’s other works, both early and late, where one continues to encounter the Notes
frequent use of devices such as interior monologue and stream of consciousness. The reason for
this is surely to be found in Tolstoy’s desire to remain true to the spirit of folklore in developing
his popular style. Events usually occur in simple chronological order, but they also occur,
according to folk conventions, in groups of three, as in “What Men Live By,” “Where Love Is,
There Is God Also,” “The Tale of Ivan the Fool” and several others. Plot in these stories does not
take on the complex forms with which Tolstoy experimented in such non-popular late works as
The Death of Ivan Il’ich and Resurrection (Voskresenie), with their use of flashbacks and shifting
points of view on the events described.
The Christian teaching as Tolstoy had come to understand it in the late 1870s and 1880s unites the
“Stories for the People” thematically. In his long essay What I Believe (V chem moia vera, 1882),
he reduced Christianity to five moral imperatives, derived from the “Sermon on the Mount”
(Matt. v-vii and parallels). Briefly stated, the five commandments are: (1) do not be angry;
(2) do not lust; (3) do not swear—that is, under an oath, surrender free moral choice to the will
of others; (4) do not resist the evil doer with force; and (5) love all people alike. These
commandments, their corollaries and the effects of disobeying them (or, more generally, the
will of God, which they represent) provide a complete thematic summary of the “Stories for the
People.”
The commandment to avoid anger is prominent in “Evil Allures, But Good Endures,” “A Spark
Neglected Burns the House,” and “Little Girls Wiser Than Their Elders”; its corollary, forgiveness,
is the theme of “The Repentant Sinner.’’ The injunction against lust never appears in the stories
for the people. The injunction against oath taking appears as a theme in “The Tale of Ivan the
Fool” when is unable to raise an army in Ivan’s kingdom because the people refuse to promise
allegiance. In “Two Old Men,” Elisei, the morally superior of the two characters, attaches little
importance to the vow he has sworn to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land when it conflicts
with an obligation to assist others who are in need. The fourth commandment, not to resist evil
with force, is the subject of “The Candle,” “The Tale of Ivan the Fool” and “The Godson.”
The only positive commandment, to love all people alike, is at the heart of most of the best
known stories for the people: “What Men Live By,” “Two Old Men,” “The Three Hermits” and
“Where Love Is, There Is God Also.”

The five remaining stories deal with the evil that comes from ignorance of or disobedience to
the Christian teaching. Their theme is excess. In “How Much Land Does a Man Need,” it takes the
form of greed for more land than needed; in “The Imp and the Crust”—the misuse of a bumper
crop of grain to produce strong drink; in “Il’ias—the contrast between the hero’s current
contentedness with poverty and his former anxiety with wealth. “ Two Brothers and the Gold”
and “A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg” condemn the use of money as a replacement for active
human concern.
The stylistic unity of the stories for the people is the product of a number of linguistic and larger
structural devices, which they share. Proverbs, sayings, and other bits of popular wisdom were
incorporated into the stories. As early as 1862, Tolstoy stated that he intended to write a series of
brief stories, each of which was to be inspired by, and offer an explanation of, a striking popular
saying (8:302).

Example: Often such sayings were used as the titles of stories. “Gde liubov’, tam i Bog”
(“Where Love Is, There Is God Also”), “Bog pravdu vidit, da ne skoro skazhet” (“God Sees the
Truth, But Waits”), “Vrazh’e lepko, a Bozh’e krepko” (“Evil Allures, But Good Endures”), and
“Upustish’ ogon’—ne potushish’” (“A Spark Neglected Burns the House”).
The majority of the stories rework existing popular narratives, such as those of the famous
Skazitel’ (“teller of tales”), VP Shchegelenok, from whom Tolstoy obtained the subjects of
“What Men Live By” and “Two Old Men.’’ Another familiar model used by Tolstoy was the

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