Pokhom's Greed

How Much Land Does a Man Require
“How Much Land Does a Man Require?” by Leo Tolstoy is a story about greed. In the story, Pokhom, the main character stated that “Ah! If only I had enough land, not even the Devil could defy me.” The Devil used his greed against him and leads him to his own death. Pokhom deserved his fate because he succeeded off others failure, he disregarded the Devil’s warning and let his greed get the better of him when it mattered most.
One of the reasons Pokhom deserved his ending because he took advantage of people during his journey to gain more land, money, and power. He took advantage of his ruined neighbor when he convinced him to sell his land for cheaper than he originally wanted to the ruined neighbor, the neighbor could not say no because Pokhom was the only person who would buy his land, Pokhom knew that so he quickly bought the land. He also took advantage of the Bashkirs because he thought they were very lazy and naïve and that he could play mind games with them, however, this led to his own demise. We learned this when the Tolstoy claimed that they just sat around all day eating and sleeping.
The night before, he had to go and walk across all of the land. In a dream, the Devil showed him his body lying there dead in front the Bashkirs and the Devil laughing. This is important, because the next day Pakhom was laying there in the exact same way and looked identical, but since his ignorance got the best of him he would not listen to this dream and still decided to go forward with this deal. He also made a big error when he was thinking about the deal and how perfect it was. However he never stopped and thought about if it is too good to be true it is probably a sham.