the following deal. Pahom has a starting point at sunup. He can purchase all the land he can walk around in one day. The deal is that Pahom must make it back to the starting point by sundown.

As the sun rises, Pahom sets out. He begins walking around all the lush, green land. The problem is he cannot seem to get enough, thus, the title of "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" After walking all day, Pahom has covered more than enough land. His greed has caused him to try and cover too much land. By the going down of the sun, Pahom is running to get to the starting point. He is sweating and about to pass out. He makes it back but drops dead from sheer exhaustion. Pahom should have been content with less land to cover. He dies in his own selfish greed. To answer the title's question, a man only needs six feet of land which is enough to be buried in:

Pahom’s servant picks up the spade with which Pahom had been marking his land and digs a grave in which to bury him: “Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”

Tolstoy became an enthusiastic advocate of the ideas of American economist and reformer Henry George, who achieved worldwide fame for his fundamental idea that the government should control all the land and derive its sole income from taxing land for its full rental value. As an example of his idea, if a house in one place rents for $1000 a month and a comparable house in another place rents for $300 a month, then the difference of $700 is being paid for the land and should go to the government rather than to the landlord. The basis of this belief on the part of Henry George and Tolstoy, and earlier of the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, is that no one should be entitled to own any part of the earth, since no one created the earth. Henry George believed that poverty is the result of people owning land they do not use.

In "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" Tolstoy is dramatizing how human greed makes some men want to acquire far more land than they need. This means that others are deprived of land altogether and are forced to work for the men who control land they are not developing. If the government derived all its revenues from the so-called "single tax" on land, i.e., the entire rental value of the land and not of any "improvements" such as buildings, there would be no need for any income tax, sales tax, excise tax, or any of the other taxes imposed by national or local governments.

The following excerpt from the article on "Henry George" in Dictionary of World Biography, 19th Century, which is accessible via eNotes, explains the most important ideas of Henry George which were published in his Progress and Poverty. (See reference link below.)

Then, in 1879, George published Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Causes of Industrial Depressions, and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth—The Remedy. Injustices were explicit in the subtitle. The remedy was nationalization of land and imposition of one single tax (later The Single Tax). Land values, George argued, as personal knowledge of stark contrasts between extraordinary wealth and dire need in San Francisco and New York convinced him, were communal, societal creations inherent in the scarcity of land. Pressures of population, production necessities, or monopolistic urges thus raised land and rental values and depressed wages. The mere possession of land often made millionaires of nonproducers or noncontributors to human welfare. A tax, therefore, on such socially created rents would allow government to redistribute such gains to alleviate want and enhance community life. George was no socialist. Indeed, since the basis of local revenues was a general property tax and since George abhorred centralization over local responsibilities, he expected local governments to fulfill these necessary functions.

Tolstoy wrote at least one lengthy article about Henry George. He said that the ideas in Progress and Poverty were so simple and obvious that anyone who read the book would agree with them. Tolstoy became a social reformer in his later years and repudiated his own famous novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina because he regarded the aristocratic characters in these works as worthless parasites. Thereafter, he addressed his writings to uneducated Russian peasants and workers, which accounts for the simplicity as well as the didactic nature of their style.

It's an appropriate title for two reasons. First of all, it relates to the overriding theme of greed. The greedy Russian peasant Pahom spends all his time acquiring as much land as he can get his hands on. But somehow it just never seems to be enough. The more land he acquires, the more he wants. So this raises the inevitable question: How much land does a man need?

Secondly, the title of the story hints at the answer that Tolstoy provides to his own question. Pahom eventually dies as a direct result of his greed, exhausted after trying to gain as much land from the Bashkirs as he can traverse in a single day. For all the land that he's acquired, all the vast wealth he's accrued, Pahom can't take any of it with him into the next world. In this world the answer to the question "How much land does a man need?" is "Just enough to be buried in."

The story portrays Pahom’s greed and the devil’s mischief. The devil overheard Pahom boast about how he would not fear the devil if he had enough land. The statement was made during a conversation between Pahom’s wife and her sister from the city. The sister bragged about how they had better lives in the city compared to what Pahom’s wife and her family had in the countryside. She talked about the exciting social life and advanced amenities in the city. Pahom’s wife in defense stated that although they did not enjoy the benefits of city life, they had less complicated lives with minimal risks to their fortunes. Pahom took the opportunity to state that the only problem facing people in the countryside was insufficient access to land and it was in the same breath that he made the boast.

The devil lured Pahom into his trap by offering him land. Pahom’s greed got the best of him, and he made a fatal mistake when the Bashkir’s made him an offer to acquire their land. In attempts to carve out a huge piece of land, Pahom walked too far and died of extreme exhaustion in front of the Bashkirs and their chief.  Pahom’s demise proved that he did not need all the land he tried to acquire because after death he left it all behind. He was buried in a six feet long grave, which was all the land he needed after all.

His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.

The title of Tolstoy's story is appropriate because, in the first place, it is a story about a man who causes his own death by trying to acquire more land than he needs or can ever use. His natural aquisitiveness is fired by all the beautiful land he sees and by the knowledge that it is all his for the taking. Tolstoy is illustrating the fact that most people use up their brief lives, and even briefer youths, in frantic activities that will be pointless in the end because they will die and have to lose everything they have acquired, even their own bodies, and perhaps their own souls. At the end of the story the protagonist is buried, and it is obvious that all the land he really needed was about six feet long, three feet wide, and six feet deep. The moral is that people ought to spend more time on spiritual values and less on material values. The man in Tolstoy's story is not much different from a lot of other men and women today who are consumed with materialistic values, who want one thing and then another and another and are never satisfied.

Tolstoy in his later years became an admirer of the American philosopher/economist Henry George and an advocate of George's program for social reform explained in his bookProgress and Poverty. Briefly, George believed that no one should be entitled to own any part of the earth, since no one created it and since those who come first can monopolize all the land and force people born later to pay them to use the land. Eventually the entire earth could be monopolized by men who did not use it. George believed that the government should own all the land and rent it out at the fair market rental value. The government should derive all its revenue from this rent and not charge any taxes of any kind.

Tolstoy's story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" illustrates how some men will try to acquire much more land than they can use, because they can either charge others to use that land or force others to work the land for them as sharecroppers or serfs. The story shows the influence of thinkers like Henry George, Herbert Spencer, the British philosopher, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher, among others.

The Devil is included in the story because Tolstoy considered the existing system of land ownership wicked and devilish, the cause of much of the human suffering that existed in his native land and elsewhere in the world, including the American Deep South where slavery still flourished.

The title "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is appropriate. It is a question that offers reflection. Pahom is greedy. He desires more and more land. He covets his neighbor's land. Then he purchases more land. Finally, he ends up at the Bashkirs' land. He can have all that he can walk around in one day. Due to his greed, Pahom tries to cover too much land. While trying to race back to the starting point, he collapses and dies.

Then the question is important. How much land does Pahom really need. Ironically, Pahom has more than enough at his burial. Since six feet of land is all that Pahom needs at his death, all of his other land will go to waste. He will not be able to enjoy it.

So the question is a good question. If Pahom had really thought about it, he had more than enough land. When all is said and done, a man only needs six feet of land in which to be buried. Pahom's greed killed him. He died because of his lust for more and more land. In the end, his burial ground covered six feet. The title is apporpriate because it makes the reader think. It causes the reader to reflect upon the nature of the question. How much Land does a man need is a title with a twist of irony. If Pahom had reflected on the question and thought about its seriousness, he might still be alive.   

You have asked a rather broad question. I suppose the main characteristic of this excellent story is the way that it operates as an allegory. Let us remember that an allegory is a story that operates on two different levels--the literal and the symbolic. What happens in an allegorical tale and the characters that populate such a story can be understood both literally and symbolically. As we read this story, it is clear that there is an obvious allegorical reading to this tale of how one man is conquered by the devil by his own greed. It is possible to argue that Pahom could stand for the human soul, and the devil for human weakness. The Commune, where Pahom starts off his life, stands for sharing and empathy, whereas the private land that Pahom wants more of insatiably represents greed and lack of empathy. Lastly, we could argue that Pahom's trip to the land of the Bashkirs could stand for the way that his greed for land has distanced him from sound values, and his final death could stand for his moral degeneration.

Through the entire story therefore, we see that each character and action has allegorical significance, which supports the theme of the story: unchecked ambition and greed destroy people. The death of Pahom demonstrates the harm of striving too much for material gain. Note how the irony of the ending supports this:

His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.

Thus it is that in spite of Pahom's insatiable desire for ever-more land, at the end of the story the question in the title is answers. Six feet is all a man needs.

In the story "How Much Land Does A Man Need?" the theme of greed is evident. The main character Pakhom feels that owning land will solve all of his problems. He finally gets the opportunity to buy some land, but this is not enough. He begins to desire more and more land.

Pakhom hears about the land that the Bashkirs have. This area has land that is lush, rich and readily available. In fact, Pakhom can have all the land that he can walk around in a day. As long as he is back to the starting place by sunset, he can obtain all the land he walks around.

The Bashkirs are clever. They know the nature of man is to have more and more and more. Pakhom begins his task which is to walk around as much land as he can before sunset. Ultimately, Pakhom makes it back to his starting point by sunset, but he falls dead because he has tried to walk around too much land. Rushing to make it back by sunset killed him. Ironically, all the land that Pakhom needs now is six feet in which to be buried. Sadly enough, Pakhom allowed his greed to overcome him. His life ends in tragedy--death.

Key to answering this question is the realisation that Tolstoy in this great story has created an allegory in which the characters, events and actions of this tale have both a literal meaning but also a symbolic interpretation. Thus it is that Tolstoy is able to comment on the changes that private land owenership brought to Russia. The effect of this story on the reader is thus linked to the purpose of the tale. Tolstoy wrote this tale to point out the dangers of materialism and also to suggest that the onset of industrialisation and modernisation was not necessarily a positive thing. Clearly his concern is on the spiritual changes that such historical movements brought to humanity, and how the grasping desire for ever more belongings and possessions could take over and control somebody, and ultimately lead them to their doom.

You might like to think about how Tolstoy establishes this through the central character of Pahom and in particular how gaining ever more land is shown to never bring him peace and happiness, as he is always left feeling unsatisfied and wanting more. This change in his character is first signalled when, having finally purchased his own land, he demonstrates the same behaviour that he used to moan about from his landlord:

Pahom turned them out again and again, and forgave their owners, and for a long time he forbore to prosecute anyone. But at last he lost patience and complained to the District Court. He knew it was the peasants' want of land, and no evil on their part, that caused the trouble, but he thought: "I cannot go on overlooking it or they will destroy all I have. They must be taught a lesson."

Pahom comes to exhibit the same qualities of greed and selfishness that he once deplored in those above him, and it is clear that as the story develops, this only intensifies. Thus it is that this story clearly demonstrates the dangers of rampant capitalism and materialism. The death of Pahom at the end ironically comments on the natural outcome of devoting your life to nothing more than material gain.

You have asked two questions and so I have edited it down to one according to enotes regulations. The title of this biting parable is very clearly ironic. This is most clearly summed up in the last paragraph of the story. But first, let us remember two facts: first of all, what we see throughout the story is that Pahom, as he acquires more and more land, becomes dissatisfied with the amount of land he had and continually wants more. Secondly, let us also remember there is a big distinction between the two words "want" and "need". What we "need" and what we "want" are often poles apart, but many people lack the wisdom to tell the difference.

Let us now consider the end of the story:

HIs servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.

So, after all of Pahom's grumbling and complaining, it turned out that all the land he needed - and all the land any of us need - was enough for a burial plot. There is an additional note of irony in that his own spade - the one thing he refused to give up during his run - is used to dig his grave. This of course puts all of Pahom's complaints throughout the story into sharp contrast:

"Our only trouble is that we haven't land enough."
"As it is, I am still too cramped to be comfortable."

Thus Tolstoy's parable paints a depressing picture about materialism - gaining more often does not lead to happiness, but to more greed and suffering.

The title presents us with a question that is answered during the course of the story and also points us towards the way in which the story serves as a kind of parable, which is a short, simple story that presents us with some kind of moral lesson. Of course, the question is very careful to ask how much land a man needs, as opposed to wants. This is crucial to the understanding of the story, and is also refered to at the very end of the story in its final paragraph, which ironically answers this question:

His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.

The question is thus answered: a man only needs enough earth to be buried in, which of course ironically contrasts with the vast stretches of land that the ever-more greedy Pahom desires. This of course supports the theme of the story, which is that unchecked ambition and greed destroys people. It was Pahom's desire to secure ever-greater plots of land that directly lead to his death and made him unable to enjoy the simple pleasures of life that he had. Having the title expressed as a question thus focuses our attention as readers on the moral message of the story and also points towards the irony of how this question is answered.

The title of "How Much Land Does a Man Need" immediately gets at its core theme: while individuals may think that there is a certain amount of material possessions that would satisfy them, to focus on the individual accumulation of wealth is fundamentally unsatisfying. Greed robs individuals of their ability to make wise decisions, maintain good relationships with others, and live satisfying lives.

In the climatic final scene of the story, it is clear that Pahom could have ended up with a very large chunk of land if he had been able to contain his greed. One can reasonably walk a very large plot of land in a day. However, because Pahom sought to get as much land as possible, he died in the attempt. He had no answer to the titular question, and it killed him in the end.