Short Story Analysis: Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy, Part 1

I was searching for a short story to break up a few of the reads I have going on, and since this blizzard (which I posted on here) hit I longed for a story about winter and I recalled a famous Leo Tolstoy story about two men being trapped in a blizzard.  Now I had read “Master and Man” many years ago—over twenty years, if not thirty—and it has always stuck with me.  It really is a great short story.  Actually it’s on the longer side of a short story.  My edition ran for forty pages, which makes it close to a novella, and I had remembered it as a short novel.  But Wikipedia, that ever pervasive corpus of knowledge, categorizes it as a short story.  I also noticed while reading the Wikipedia entry that it was published in 1895, which makes it a relatively late story in Tolstoy’s body of work, and squarely in his most religiously inspired works.

First off, you can read it on line, and I believe this is the same translation I read.

The story is about a merchant who has this immediate opportunity to purchase a grove at a bargain price, and goes off to complete the deal before someone else takes it. Faced with impending bad weather, he brings along his servant.  It’s winter and he misjudges the weather, and they are caught in a blizzard, and it becomes a question of survival. 

The story is told in ten chapters, and I’m going to summarize it for you by providing the kernel action of each chapter.  Here:

I.  We are introduced to Vasili Andreevich, a merchant and church elder, and his laborer, Nikita.  Vasili has to go to purchase a grove at what he sees as a huge bargain.  It is very cold and Vasili against his wishes takes Nikita with him.

II. The depart and after a while with the wind blowing harder than they anticipated and it starting to snow they realized for the first time they were lost.

III.  They come upon a village and come across three peasants, where they ask for directions and are pointed out.  Suddenly they realize they are off the road are now lost for the second time, and now a full blizzard is coming down.

IV.  They come to another village and they stop at a rich household where they warm up and are offered to spend the night.  But Vasili afraid he will lose his bargain insists that they can make it to their destination.  One of the sons of the household sets out with them as a guide.

V. After the son leaves them at a turning point, the two continue but the blizzard has so intensified that they can’t see a few feet in front.  Shortly they are lost now for the third time, and they just miss driving over a ravine.  The circle around but the horse has reached a point of exhaustion and refuses to go on.

VI. Nikita unharnesses the horse and decides to hunker down for the night.  They try to sleep but Vasili unable and now in a panic decides it’s best to search for a house rather than freeze to death.  He mounts the horse and goes off into the blizzard.

VII.  Nikita, too tired to go with Vasili allows sleep to overcome him, all with the thought that it will be his death.

VIII. Vasili stumbles about in the blizzard, the horse escapes from under him, so that now he is horseless and lost.

IX.  In a panic he circles about and finds where he started, the sled with Nikita.  He finds Nikita near death and he realizes it has all been his fault.  This sting of conscience rises to an epiphany of his inconsideration and selfishness and opens Nikita’s coat and his and presses his body against Nikita’s to warm him.  In this position Vasili has a dream of someone calling him.

X. In the morning we find that it is Nikita who is alive and Vasili who has died.  The peasants rescue Nikita.

The story hinges on the term “master.”  It is set “in the seventies,” which means 1870s, and this is important given it was published in 1895, a full twenty years after the setting.  Tolstoy sets the story at a time when serfdom was abolished in Russia.  From Wikipedia: 

In 1861 Alexander II freed all serfs in a major agrarian reform, stimulated in part by his view that "it is better to liberate the peasants from above" than to wait until they won their freedom by risings "from below".

Serfdom was abolished in 1861, but its abolition was achieved on terms not always favorable to the peasants and served to increase revolutionary pressures. Between 1864 to 1871 serfdom was abolished in Georgia. In Kalmykia serfdom was only abolished in 1892.

Though Nikita, the peasant, is no longer a serf, he has lived as a dependent serf for most of his life.  Not only is he indebted to Vasili, but Nikita has a psychological and relational mentality of a subordinate.  But the relationship is even more than that; it’s a class structure of lower rank.  And with that comes a responsibility for Vasili to protect and care for Nikita.  Now that the serfs are free, will Vasili still feel this obligation?  To some degree he does.  We learn in the first chapter that Vasili had recently given Martha, Nikita’s wife, “wheat flour, tea, sugar, and a quart of vodka, the lot costing three rubles, and also five rubles in cash, for which she thanked him as for a special favour.”  There is an implied serf/master arrangement that has continued, of which Vasili points out:

‘What agreement did we ever draw up with you?' said Vasili Andreevich to Nikita. 'If you need anything, take it; you will work it off. I'm not like others to keep you waiting, and making up accounts and reckoning fines. We deal straight-forwardly. You serve me and I don't neglect you.'

And when saying this Vasili Andreevich was honestly convinced that he was Nikita's benefactor, and he knew how to put it so plausibly that all those who depended on him for their money, beginning with Nikita, confirmed him in the conviction that he was their benefactor and did not overreach them.

'Yes, I understand, Vasili Andreevich. You know that I serve you and take as much pains as I would for my own father. I understand very well!' Nikita would reply. He was quite aware that Vasili Andreevich was cheating him, but at the same time he felt that it was useless to try to clear up his accounts with him or explain his side of the matter, and that as long as he had nowhere to go he must accept what he could get.

This master and servant relationship cannot be minimized.  “You serve me and I don’t neglect you,” Vasili says.  You know that I serve you.”  It is critical to their relationship owing to a feudal construct, and it points to a social hierarchy.  Does Vasili really take care of Nikita?  Yes, but he also cheats him.

This hierarchy is further established in that Nikita is also a master, not of a people but of the domestic animals.  Also from the first chapter we see Nikita hitching up the horse.

Now, having heard his master's order to harness, he went as usual cheerfully and willingly to the shed, stepping briskly and easily on his rather turned-in feet; took down from a nail the heavy tasselled leather bridle, and jingling the rings of the bit went to the closed stable where the horse he was to harness was standing by himself.

'What, feeling lonely, feeling lonely, little silly?' said Nikita in answer to the low whinny with which he was greeted by the good-tempered, medium-sized bay stallion, with a rather slanting crupper, who stood alone in the shed. 'Now then, now then, there's time enough. Let me water you first,' he went on, speaking to the horse just as to someone who understood the words he was using, and having whisked the dusty, grooved back of the well-fed young stallion with the skirt of his coat, he put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his ears and forelock, and having taken off his halter led him out to water.

Picking his way out of the dung-strewn stable, Mukhorty frisked, and making play with his hind leg pretended that he meant to kick Nikita, who was running at a trot beside him to the pump.

'Now then, now then, you rascal!' Nikita called out, well knowing how carefully Mukhorty threw out his hind leg just to touch his greasy sheepskin coat but not to strike him--a trick Nikita much appreciated.

After a drink of the cold water the horse sighed, moving his strong wet lips, from the hairs of which transparent drops fell into the trough; then standing still as if in thought, he suddenly gave a loud snort.

'If you don't want any more, you needn't. But don't go asking for any later,' said Nikita quite seriously and fully explaining his conduct to Mukhorty. Then he ran back to the shed pulling the playful young horse, who wanted to gambol all over the yard, by the rein.

The horse Mukhorty is there throughout the story as they lose their way through the blizzard.  Nikita is his master, also with an obligation for his wellbeing.  Notice the contrast in personality.  For Vasili it is a social obligation, and only that.  There is no love or benevolence in it.  Nikita is tender and kind even to the domesticated beasts.  He speaks to the horse as if they are equals.  Vasili on the other hand speaks to Nikita in the language of exchange, of commerce.  Vasili undergoes a dramatic realization that Nikita is a man of equal standing before God at the story’s climax.

Stay tune for the story’s dramatic conclusion in a Part 2 post.  

Lines I Wished I’d Written: The Panic in the Blizzard from Tolstoy’s “Master and Man”

When we had our one big snow storm earlier this winter, I decided I wanted to read a story set in a snow storm.  I had read Leo Tolstoy’s story “Master and Man” many years ago, and decided it would be perfect.  It’s a story of a rich land owner, Vasili Andreevich, and his servant Nikita, who get lost in a snowstorm.  I’m in the middle of a short story analysis of this great story, and will post it when I’m done.  But in the meantime I wanted to post this great section.  It’s chapter VIII of the story.  Nikita has given up trying to find his way out of the blizzard and resolved that he will die.  Vasili is in a panic and is making a vain attempt to find his way.  He pushes the horse, Mukhorty, through the forest only to come back to the same place he started.  

Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich, with his feet and the ends of the reins, urged the horse on in the direction in which for some reason he expected the forest and forester's hut to be. The snow covered his eyes and the wind seemed intent on stopping him, but bending forward and constantly lapping his coat over and pushing it between himself and the cold harness pad which prevented him from sitting properly, he kept urging the horse on. Mukhorty ambled on obediently though with difficulty, in the direction in which he was driven.

Vasili Andreevich rode for about five minutes straight ahead, as he thought, seeing nothing but the horse's head and the white waste, and hearing only the whistle of the wind about the horse's ears and his coat collar.

Suddenly a dark patch showed up in front of him. His heart beat with joy, and he rode towards the object, already seeing in imagination the walls of village houses. But the dark patch was not stationary, it kept moving; and it was not a village but some tall stalks of wormwood sticking up through the snow on the boundary between two fields, and desperately tossing about under the pressure of the wind which beat it all to one side and whistled through it. The sight of that wormwood tormented by the pitiless wind made Vasili Andreevich shudder, he knew not why, and he hurriedly began urging the horse on, not noticing that when riding up to the wormwood he had quite changed his direction and was now heading the opposite way, though still imagining that he was riding towards where the hut should be. But the horse kept making towards the right, and Vasili Andreevich kept guiding it to the left.

Again something dark appeared in front of him. Again he rejoiced, convinced that now it was certainly a village. But once more it was the same boundary line overgrown with wormwood, once more the same wormwood desperately tossed by the wind and carrying unreasoning terror to his heart. But its being the same wormwood was not all, for beside is there was a horse's track partly snowed over. Vasili Andreevich stopped, stooped down and looked carefully. It was a horse-track only partially covered with snow, and could be none but his own horse's hoofprints. He had evidently gone round in a small circle. 'I shall perish like that!' he thought, and not to give way to his terror he urged on the horse still more, peering into the snowy darkness in which he saw only flitting and fitful points of light. Once he thought he heard the barking of dogs or the howling of wolves, but the sounds were so faint and indistinct that he did not know whether he heard them or merely imagined them, and he stopped and began to listen intently.

Suddenly some terrible, deafening cry resounded near his ears, and everything shivered and shook under him. He seized Mukhorty's neck, but that too was shaking all over and the terrible cry grew still more frightful. For some seconds Vasili Andreevich could not collect himself or understand what was happening. It was only that Mukhorty, whether to encourage himself or to call for help, had neighed loudly and resonantly. 'Ugh, you wretch! How you frightened me, damn you!' thought Vasili Andreevich. But even when he understood the cause of his terror he could not shake it off.

'I must calm myself and think things over,' he said to himself, but yet he could not stop, and continued to urge the horse on, without noticing that he was now going with the wind instead of against it. His body, especially between his legs where it touched the pad of the harness and was not covered by his overcoats, was getting painfully cold, especially when the horse walked slowly. His legs and arms trembled and his breathing came fast. He saw himself perishing amid this dreadful snowy waste, and could see no means of escape.

Suddenly the horse under him tumbled into something and, sinking into a snow-drift, began to plunge and fell on his side. Vasili Andreevich jumped off, and in so doing dragged to one side the breechband on which his foot was resting, and twisted round the pad to which he held as he dismounted. As soon as he had jumped off, the horse struggled to his feet, plunged forward, gave one leap and another, neighed again, and dragging the drugget and the breechband after him, disappeared, leaving Vasili Andreevich alone on the snow-drift.

The latter pressed on after the horse, but the snow lay so deep and his coats were so heavy that, sinking above his knees at each step, he stopped breathless after taking not more than twenty steps. 'The copse, the oxen, the lease-hold, the shop, the tavern, the house with the iron-roofed barn, and my heir,' thought he. 'How can I leave all that? What does this mean? It cannot be!' These thoughts flashed through his mind. Then he thought of the wormwood tossed by the wind, which he had twice ridden past, and he was seized with such terror that he did not believe in the reality of what was happening to him. 'Can this be a dream?' he thought, and tried to wake up but could not. It was real snow that lashed his face and covered him and chilled his right hand from which he had lost the glove, and this was a real desert in which he was now left alone like that wormwood, awaiting an inevitable, speedy, and meaningless death.

'Queen of Heaven! Holy Father Nicholas, teacher of temperance!' he thought, recalling the service of the day before and the holy icon with its black face and gilt frame, and the tapers which he sold to be set before that icon and which were almost immediately brought back to him scarcely burnt at all, and which he put away in the store-chest. He began to pray to that same Nicholas the Wonder-Worker to save him, promising him a thanksgiving service and some candles. But he clearly and indubitably realized that the icon, its frame, the candles, the priest, and the thanksgiving service, though very important and necessary in church, could do nothing for him here, and that there was and could be no connexion between those candles and services and his present disastrous plight. 'I must not despair,' he thought. 'I must follow the horse's track before it is snowed under. He will lead me out, or I may even catch him. Only I must not hurry, or I shall stick fast and be more lost than ever.'

But in spite of his resolution to go quietly, he rushed forward and even ran, continually falling, getting up and falling again. The horse's track was already hardly visible in places where the snow did not lie deep. 'I am lost!' thought Vasili Andreevich. 'I shall lose the track and not catch the horse.' But at that moment he saw something black. It was Mukhorty, and not only Mukhorty, but the sledge with the shafts and the kerchief. Mukhorty, with the sacking and the breechband twisted round to one side, was standing not in his former place but nearer to the shafts, shaking his head which the reins he was stepping on drew downwards. It turned out that Vasili Andreevich had sunk in the same ravine Nikita had previously fallen into, and that Mukhorty had been bringing him back to the sledge and he had got off his back no more than fifty paces from where the sledge was.

This is such great writing.  One feels the panic and desperation.  The horse brings Vasili back to Nikita where the story’s climax will occur.  You can read the story on line, here.  I found the story even greater in this reading than when I read it many years ago.  Stay tuned for my analysis.