Leo Tolstoy

Master and Man Leo Tolstoy

"Master and Man" is a story about the passage from life to death, one of Leo Tolstoy's abiding concerns from "Three Deaths" (1859) onwards. In this short story, a land owner named Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov takes along one of his peasants, Nikita, for a short journey to the house of the owner of a forest. He is impatient and wishes to get to the town more quickly 'for business' (purchasing the forest before other contenders can get there). They find themselves in the middle of a blizzard, but the master in his avarice wishes to press on. They eventually get lost off the road and they try to camp. The master's peasant soon finds himself about to die from hypothermia. After leaving his peasant to die, and returning to the same place he had fled from, the master attains a spiritual/moral revelation, and Tolstoy once again repeats one of his famous themes: that the only true happiness in life is found by living for others.