Greed is the peasant Pahom's main flaw. From the outset, it is clear that Pahom wants more land and is unsatisfied with his current life. His wish for more land comes true when he is able to buy a share in some communal land which has been broken up into individual plots.

This additional land is soon not good enough for Pahom, however, and he becomes a nuisance to his fellow landowners by fining and suing them. Later, Pahom moves his family to land beyond the Volga River, where he is able to have three times as much land as what he originally had. However, he is still not satisfied for long.

This ongoing dissatisfaction leads Pahom to the Bashkirs, who he hears are selling land at cheap prices. They offer him a deal in which he can have as much land as he can walk around in a single day, as long as he returns to his starting point before sundown. Pahom agrees to these terms in an attempt to secure all the property he wants, and he pays for it with his life. Unable to surrender his greed, Pahom walks too far and must run to make it back to where he began in time. Ultimately, Pahom's lust controls him to the point of death, as he collapses from exhaustion at the end.