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

6. What criteria do the two sisters use to judge each other’s lives? By which of these criteria— Notes
or another—do you tend to evaluate your life?
7. What is the Bashkírs’ “one thousand rubles a day” policy? What is the real test of the
policy?
8. A dealer told Pahon about wonderful distant land. What did he tell Pahon that Pahon
should do to make the owners of the land like him enough to give him land?
9. Why does Pahóm die in his pursuit of the land? How much land does it take to bury him?

10. How is the story an allegory? What is the message that Tolstoy is trying to send?
11. Based on the title ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need’, what do you predict the moral of
this story might be?
12. How did Pahon change his attitude toward his neighbours once he became a landowner
himself?
13. Toward the end of the walk, Pahom is hot and becomes terribly sleepy. He thinks,
“An hour to suffer, a lifetime to live.” How does this observation by Pahom foreshadow
the outcome of the story?
14. As Pahom’s actions indicate, one of the lessons this story teaches is that the more people
have, the more they want. Do you agree with this statement?
15. Might the peasant actually be the devil in disguise? If so, what is the devil hoping to
accomplish?

Answers: Self Assessment

1. War and Peace 2. 1886

3. Christian beliefs 4. Devil
5. Pahóm

6.12 Further Readings

Book Orwin Tussing Donna. The Cambridge to Tolstoy (2002), Cambridge University
Press.

Online links http://tara-tolstoy.tripod.com/id2.html
http://wesleyku.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/literary-analysis-
%E2%80%9Chow-much-land-does-a-man-need%E2%80%9D-2011/
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/leo-tolstoy/
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/sep/11.htm
http://www.philosophylounge.com/learn-tolstoys-morality-tale-land-man/

http://www1.umn.edu/lol-russ/PopLit/overview_of_the_life_and_works_
of_leo_tolstoy.htm
http://www1.umn.edu/lol-russ/PopLit/Tolstoy%20and%20Popular%
20Literature.htm

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