# Pahóm — The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories character guide

> Pahóm in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy.

**Role:** major

**First appearance:** 0051-how-much-land-does-a-man-need

## Snapshot

A peasant who keeps buying more land than he can use, convinced that a little more will finally make him safe from want and from the devil.

## Who they are

Pahóm begins as a hardworking peasant with enough, yet every improvement only sharpens his hunger for more acres and more security. He buys, sells, and migrates in pursuit of land, brushing aside his wife's warning that greed has already cost them once. When he hears of cheap fertile land among the Bashkirs, he sees the chance of a lifetime, and the story's quiet bargain begins to tighten around his restless desire.

## In the story

### [How Much Land Does a Man Need?](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/chapters/how-much-land-does-a-man-need)

The central peasant whose greed for land is stoked by the sisters' argument. He makes the fatal deal with the Bashkirs and dies from exhaustion after his desperate land-grab walk.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/characters/pahom
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/characters