Rationality vs. Generosity Theme Analysis

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 of selfishness. Marya and the angel Mikhail fall prey to this kind of logical reasoning in other ways, too—in Marya’s case when determining which infant twin to feed, and in Mikhail’s case when evaluating the dying mother’s plea. For all four characters, however, true prosperity and happiness are ultimately reached by eschewing logical reasoning altogether. It is only when the characters act irrationally—from pure love instead of material calculation—that they can treat each other with true generosity. And, counterintuitively, acts of irrational generosity lead the characters to flourish materially as well as spiritually.

Semyon’s mindset at the beginning of the story draws a strong correlation between rationality and selfishness. Rational calculation prevents real generosity: when Semyon first encounters a cold and naked Mikhail on the roadside, logical consideration of his own resources is what keeps him from stopping to help the stranger. Semyon has just spent much of the journey home working himself into a frenzy about his own poverty relative to his neighbors’, so the thought of helping someone else feels burdensome, aggravating, and (he tells himself) physically impossible. He also convinces himself that it would be foolhardy to approach the stranger lest he should be mistaken for a bad actor and get into some kind of legal trouble. It is only when a prick of conscience quiets these rational arguments that Semyon turns back to help the stranger. In this case, then, rationality must be overcome before generosity can occur.

Likewise, at the beginning of the story, Matryona’s selfishness is tied to her obsessive calculation of resources—but denying her impulse to be selfish actually brings her family more resources. Matryona’s fear for her family’s material well-being is manifested in her nervous computations about how to make their small supply of bread last. This same rational fear is what keeps her from sharing food with the stranger, Mikhail, that her husband brings home. Indeed, even after Matryona has softened toward Mikhail and she has given him the last piece of bread, her old rational attitude remains tied up with greed and stinginess. As they are falling asleep, she asks Semyon how they are possibly going to get more bread for their family. And with this rational worry comes a return of bitterness, resentment, and greed: she asks Semyon why they are always helping other people and no one ever helps them. For both Matryona and Semyon, rational worries are centered on their impoverished family’s well-being. And yet their irrational choice to take in Mikhail actually ends up alleviating their poverty: because of Mikhail’s workmanship, Semyon’s shoe business flourishes, and the family has more money than they did before. In this sense, the story suggests that letting go of rationality and embracing irrational generosity may actually solve the problems that rational thinking attempted (and failed) to resolve.

The story that Marya shares with the family has a similar message: that choosing irrational generosity over rational calculation can pay huge dividends. When Marya first started taking care of her adopted daughters (a pair of orphaned twins) rationality governed her behavior. She did not choose to take in the twins because of genuine compassion but instead because she was the only person in the village who could breastfeed (because she already had a breastfeeding infant). The men of the village asked her to look after the girls until another arrangement could be found. What’s more, Marya recalls that she feared that she wouldn’t have enough milk to feed both twins and her own son, and so—rationally reasoning that the crippled twin wouldn’t live long anyway—she decided to feed only the healthy twin. But a twinge of irrational pity, similar to the one Semyon experienced on the roadside, caused Marya to change her course of action and begin feeding both twins. Not only did the specific problem she feared—that of not having enough milk—fail to occur (she recalls that God gave her “so much milk that it filled [her] breasts to overflowing”), but her generosity also paid off in ways that her rational calculation couldn’t have predicted. Her own son died in infancy, and so the two adoptive daughters allowed Marya to still have the large and happy family that she wanted.

Mikhail’s story about his banishment from heaven provides yet another argument against rational reasoning. Mikhail describes how, when he encountered the twins’ mother on her death bed, he was convinced by her rational argument. She begged him not to take her soul, reasoning that since she had no family members and her husband had just died, her babies would die if she did. Mikhail agreed with the woman’s assessment and told God he couldn’t bear to take the woman’s soul. As a punishment for disobeying Him, God sent Mikhail down to earth, and there, Mikhail saw that the woman’s rational argument had been incorrect: the children survived, Mikhail eventually understood, because of the irrational generosity of strangers. In this way, Mikhail’s story is a lesson about rationality: it was not “given” to the mother to know (or predict rationally) what her children needed to survive, and, Mikhail expands, it is not “given” to anyone to know rationally what they themselves will need in the future. In this way, the limits of rational, intentional planning are what require mortal men to depend on each other and on the irrational generosity of strangers.