What Men Live By Themes

Tolstoy’s “What Men Live By” abounds with mysteries and unanswered questions. When the shoemaker Semyon and his wife, Matryona, take in a naked stranger, Mikhail, they are unable to glean concrete information from the man about his past and identity. In addition to Mikhail’s mysterious history, his behavior bewilders Semyon and Matryona: in the six years he lives with them, he smiles only three times. (Moreover, it is not clear to the couple…

In Tolstoy’s “What Men Live By,” characters frequently engage in rational thinking and cold calculation as a way of dealing with hardship. The shoemaker Semyon and his wife Matryona, for example, spend much of the story’s first chapters engaging in elaborate mental calculations and justifications concerning their own poverty. They attempt to use reason and rational judgment both to determine how much they can “afford” to share with others and to defend their acts…