he currently is. So he sets about acquiring land, something that most people in his situation would probably do.

The problem, however, is that Pahom is never satisfied. No matter how much land he buys—and he buys a considerable amount—it's somehow never enough. Corrosive greed has entered into Pahom's soul and is eating away at it, and he becomes a figure of hatred and loathing in the village when he fines other villagers and even sues a man. Before long, Pahom has changed beyond recognition: he becomes a greedy, selfish character without any friends.

But Pahom doesn't care. He's too obsessed with buying more acres of land to pay much attention to what others think about him. So he goes on, buying more and more land, until eventually, he drops dead from exhaustion after staking out a massive plot that he believed to be an unbeatable bargain.

Poor old Pahom learns the hard way that the only land a man really needs is a tiny little plot for burying his body. The moral of this story, then, is that greed corrupts and even kills, as Pahom's experiences demonstrate.

In this story, the peasant Pahom feels that if he had more land, he would no longer have anything to fear and would be completely satisfied. He wouldn't even be afraid of the devil himself. However, when Pahom and his neighbors try to pool their money to buy a piece of land, their satisfaction doesn't last long. Soon, they are fighting amongst themselves and have to break the land into individual plots.

Pahom, because the devil tests him, amasses more and more land. Although he is initially satisfied, that satisfaction does not last long: the more land he gets, the more he wants. Land breeds dissatisfaction in him rather than happiness. For example, Pahom enters into a groundless lawsuit against a neighbor, and he begins fining people for trespassing. His land becomes more important to him than his relationships with other humans. Instead of loving people and using things, he is loving things and using people.

Finally, Pahom strikes a deal in which, for just a thousand rubles, he can have all the land he can walk around over the course of one day—as long as he ends up exactly where he started. His greed causes him to overreach and walk further and further, and he has to sprint to get back to his beginning, where he falls dead. In the end, the story leaves readers with the message that all the land a person really needs is six feet to be buried in.

The story shows powerfully that greed is a disease. Like an addiction to drugs or alcohol, it grows more and more acute. The more one gets, the more one wants. And the more one gets, the more fearful one becomes about losing what one has. Instead of helping people, greed alienates people from their fellow humans and, ultimately, kills.

There are several conflicts in "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" The story begins with a minor conflict between two sisters, which leads to the first major conflict: that between the Devil and Pahom. Agreeing with his wife, Pahom incautiously boasts to himself that if he had enough land, he would not fear the Devil himself. Becoming a landowner initially seems like good fortune for Pahom, but in fact, it is the Devil tempting him, causing Pahom to become greedier and greedier until he ends up dying in his attempts to amass more land.

The conflict between Pahom and the devil is mirrored by Pahom's own internal conflict. This is clearly displayed when Pahom first becomes a landowner. The local peasants are always trespassing on his land, allowing their horses and cows to graze there. In fact, Pahom knows from his own time as a peasant how difficult it is to prevent the animals from straying onto others' land. He resented being fined when this happened with his own livestock, and the fines strained relations between him and the lady who owned the land.

Pahom has not forgotten this now that he is a landowner himself, but the possessive side of his character wins the conflict, and he complains to the District Court, alienating his neighbors. Pahom's unending desire for more rules his actions; he succumbs to each of the devil's temptations, and his greed ultimately consumes him.

Land is depicted in the story as primarily a source of wealth. The grasping peasant, Pahom, becomes obsessed with the ownership of land and the wealth and social status it will bring. In the process, he loses sight of land as a place to call home, to set down roots. He no longer has the kind of mystical kinship to the soil advocated so strongly by Tolstoy. In his desire to acquire as much land as he can get his hands on, Pahom comes to regard the ground beneath his feet as an object, an economic commodity, something to be exploited for all it's worth.

The Bashkirs have a much healthier, more traditional attitude towards land, and so have no hesitation in allowing Pahom to take as much as he can traverse by foot in a single day. In their naivety they are wise, and Tolstoy insinuates that Pahom should adopt the same attitude. Sadly for him he does not, and in his headlong pursuit of landed wealth, Pahom loses not just his soul but also his life. How much land does a man need? Just enough to bury a coffin. Tragically, greed and materialism had taken over Pahom's life so completely that he was only able to reestablish his lost contact with the soil in death.

"How much Land does a Man Need" is a story about land-greed. From this perspective, it is not the land itself which is the problem, rather it is the rapacious greed to acquire more of it (essentially, the acquisition of wealth for its own sake), that the story condemns.

Indeed, note that the story is explicitly Christian in its set-up. In its first chapter, Pahom declares that his unhappiness is caused by his not owning enough land, and that, if he were to only own enough land, he would fear nothing, not even the Devil. The Devil hears his claim, and decides to test him on this. By granting Pahom's wish, the Devil expects to bring Pahom under his power.

This is a story about corruption, and as Pahom acquires more land, his hunger for still more land increases. He makes enemies of his neighbors, and all the while continues to seek out better prospects, always wanting more, never contenting himself with what he already has. He is given over entirely to his greed (and this, rather than the land itself, is what Tolstoy condemns. It's a warning against unrestrained excess). When we come to the story's ending, when he accepts the terms offered by the Bashkirs, that same greed will lead to his destruction.

Pakhom is not a particularly distinctive character. Tolstoy presents him as a "type" of peasant, one who is greedy, ambitious and perpetually dissatisfied. It was Tolstoy's purpose to point a moral in this story, and he was obviously addressing it to the common people, especially the peasant farmers. Tolstoy's lesson to these people is that greed is a common human failing and that greed hurts everyone, including the greedy person himself. By attempting to acquire more land that he obviously needs, Pakhom would be helping to create a shortage of land, making it harder for everyone to gain a living. Others would be tempted to follow his example and buy up as much of the land as they could acquire for themselves. 

Tolstoy was deeply impressed by the writings of the American philosopher/economist Henry George, whose best-known work is Progress and Poverty. The basic principle of Henry George's teaching is that no one has a right to own any part of the earth, any more than he has a right to own any part of the ocean or the sky. Such a man did not create the land, nor did he acquire it from anyone who created it. The government should task land for its full rental value and use this as its only income for whatever expenditures were necessary. George's idea was called "The Single Tax." There were Henry George Schools in the U.S., Great Britain, and elsewhere. As Tolstoy explains in his writings on Henry George, if the government took the entire rental value of land in taxes, then there would be no incentive for anyone to monopolize more land than he could actually use. There would be no sales taxes, excise taxes, income taxes, or taxes on homes and buildings--only on the value of the land itself.

Tolstoy believed that if a private person could acquire more land than he needed it would force others to pay him rent on something he was not entitled to own. This was an offense pointed out by Jean-Jacques Rousseau before the French Revolution.

The main character is called Pahom in many of the reference sources, including the summary of "How Much Land Does A Man Need?" in the eNotes Study Guide. He is also called Pahom in the Wikipedia article on the story. The only variation on the name seems to Pakhom. You can access the eNotes Study Guide by clicking on the reference link below. There are also many questions and answers accessible at that site, and many of them contain the name as Pahom. Of course everybody is referring to some English translation of Tolstoy's story, and the name may be different in the original. There must be many different English translations of this famous story.

Tolstoy had another reason for writing "How Much Land Does A Man Need?" He discovered the teaching of Henry George, an American whose book Progress and Poverty had a strong international influence. Henry George's basic idea is that nobody should be entitled to own any part of the earth, and that it should be common property, like the sky and the sea. Everyone who wanted land for farming or building should pay the annual rental value of the land to the government, and the government should have no other source of income such as income taxes, sales taxes, and excise taxes. George and Tolstoy, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believed that private ownership of land was the source of many social ills.

In Tolstoy's story the protagonist is trying to acquire much more land than he needs. If everybody acted like Pahom all the earth would be monopolized by private owners who would be able to force others to pay them just to live on the earth. But if everybody only used as much land as they actually needed, there would be enough for everybody to live in comfort and in harmony. Pahom is just like all the others who wish to fence off part of the earth and make it inaccessible to others while they have no use for it themselves. This is not greed for land but greed for power and money. It is obvious in Tolstoy's story that Pahom cannot use all the land he covets. If he had more time he would try to take in all of Asia.

One overriding theme can be found in Tolstoy's short story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"  One must learn to be content with what one has without getting too greedy and grasping.  Pahom is a man who has a loving family and enough to provide for them.  He and his wife are content to live outside the city and away from any of the Devil's temptations; yet, he wishes he had more land.  Pahom acts on this wish more than once, and he eventually gets so greedy (with the Devil's help, it's true) that he dies with nothing.--nothing bu the six feet of land needed to bury him.  Despite the enticement of the Devil, Pahom could have chosen contentment and expected God to provide.  Instead, he chose to taunt the Devil and become distracted by his greed for more land.  Pahom would not have died such an untimely death if he been content with the blessings he had. 

I've attached an excellent e-notes summary below which might also be helpful for you.