Prideful Ambition

            Ambition is commonly seen as an admirable quality; in fact, it is defined as, “a strong desire to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.”  Ambition discourages laziness and encourages motivation and perseverance.  However, a key component of ambition is one’s judgment.  The ability to judge whether the cost of something is worth the following circumstances is crucial.

            Tolstoy’s character Pakhom is characterized by his greed, ambition, and restlessness, each of which lead to his eventual death.  His lack of judgment is one of the key components to his inevitable downfall.  Unable to think logically about the potential outcome of his infinite ambition, he is never satisfied with his current situation.  He has to have more land, no matter the cost.

            Pakhom values his land too highly, determined to have more, regardless of the consequences.  At first, the cost is rather small: money.  Although money is what most often comes to mind at the word “cost,” it is the least valuable thing he has to give.  Once he grew and sold enough crops, he could easily buy more land.  The higher quality the land he sought was, the more he is willing to give up for it, whether he realizes it or not.  Isolation is another cost of his search for land and secondly, power.  He and his family live separately from their community.  Finally, when Pakhom goes to the Bashkirs, all he can think of is exactly how little the land would cost: a simple day’s walk.  However, as he begins to realize that he is running out of time, he trades his life for his pride.  He was so concerned of what these strangers would think of him if he gave up, so determined to keep the land, that he loses his life in the process: the greatest expense of all.  Pakhom’s ambition was an admirable quality on its own, but once combined with his greed, pride, and restlessness, it had snowballed into a deadly combination.

            One point that stands out is the devil’s minor participation in the matter.  He manipulates and tempts Pakhom with more and more land; it’s true.  But each successive purchase is Pakhom’s own decision.  He is unaware of any outside influence, so the responsibility lies on his own shoulders.  In the end, he alone allows the opportunities presented by the devil to warp his perception of his own reality.

            It’s difficult to comprehend how one who had lived such a poor life in the beginning could never appreciate the better circumstances he continued to achieve.  With each purchase of new land, Pakhom and his family are better off than they had been before.  He is able to grow more crops and pay his debts, but continually considers himself “poor and cramped up” when he compares himself to others.  His ambition blinds him to what he had before.

            It’s easy, seeing how his story ends, to judge Pakhom, and think him an overly ambitious fool.  But even today, we can see that humanity is plagued by the same prideful characteristics.  It may not be as obvious as the physical manifestation of the devil sitting behind our stoves to push us along, but each of us have potentially unattainable goals that we would go to any length to achieve.  The temptation of further achievements, through our own hard work and ambition, can corrupt even those who were once satisfied with their situations.  This newfound pride can cause us to think too highly of ourselves, and make us believe we deserve more than what we have, even if it is “just enough.”  This is justified through the ironic foreshadowing in the very first scene of “How Much Land Does A Man Need?”  What Pakhom’s wife threatens will happen to her boastful older sister ends up happening to her own family.  The unending search for future happiness and success can often leave us blind to the fact that we are already happy and successful.  Ambition truly is a wonderful quality, but we cannot leave it unharnessed, or it can lead us to our own destruction.