Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in What Men Live By, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mystery
Rationality vs. Generosity
Selfless Love
Summary
Analysis
Hearing Mikhail’s story, Semyon and Matryona begin to weep. The angel then recalls how he sat beside the church in the cold and in pain until he saw Semyon walking toward him on the road. It was the first time he had seen the face of a mortal man, and he recalls that the sight was terrifying for him. He also remembers that he could hear Semyon wondering out loud how to feed himself and his family, even as Mikhail was starving and freezing right before his eyes. Mikhail adds that when Semyon was worrying selfishly about how to feed his own family, his face became especially terrifying; Mikhail recalls that it “bore the stamp of death.”
Mikhail’s memory of Semyon coming down the road provides a new lens on an earlier passage. From Mikhail’s perspective, Semyon’s worries about his own well-being seemed not only selfish but actually terrifying and deathlike in Mikhail’s eyes. This intensifies a connection between generosity and life on the one hand, and greed and death on the other, which also came up with the rich gentleman’s death. These different outcomes suggest that generosity and love are rewarding and spiritually fulfilling, whereas selfishness and cruelty are damaging and spiritually corrupting for both the selfish person and the people around them.
Themes
Mikhail then remembers how Semyon turned back for him. Semyon’s whole face seemed to have changed, and it no longer scared Mikhail; in fact, now he could see God in Semyon’s face. Mikhail then remembers how he and Semyon returned to Semyon’s house, recalling that Matryona’s face terrified him even more than Semyon’s had. He describes her breath as smelling “like death,” and he says he could tell that she wanted to throw him out onto the street. But then she, too, seemed to suddenly transform, and he could see God in her as well. He smiled then, for the first time, because he realized he had learned the lesson to God’s first question, “what dwells in man”—the answer was love.
Here, Mikhail makes the connection between his smiles and God’s lessons explicit. Matryona’s deathlike state further connects selfishness to spiritual corruption and decay, whereas her decision to be generous toward Mikhail seemed to breathe life back into her. In this way, Mikhail confirms that selfless love is transformative both for the person extending it and for the person receiving it. In fact, he goes so far as to say that he could see God in Matryona when she began to love Mikhail, suggesting that loving one another is humanity’s natural and proper mode of being (“what dwells in man”) because it emulates God’s divine love.
Themes
Next, Mikhail recalls the episode with the wealthy man. He tells Matryona and Semyon that he could see the Angel of Death enter the house with the man, and that he immediately knew that the man would die before the end of the day. The wealthy man ordered boots to last him for a whole year, oblivious to the fact that he’d be dead by that evening. The irony of this moment taught Mikhail the answer to God’s second question—“what is not given to man.” The answer to this question, Mikhail realized, was knowledge of one’s bodily needs (and, more specifically, knowledge of death). Recognizing the answer to the second question, Mikhail smiled for a second time.
Mikhail’s analysis of the episode with the wealthy gentleman connects selfishness and cruelty—both of which the gentleman epitomized—with an attempt to control the future. In demanding boots that would last him a whole year, the wealthy gentleman behaved presumptuously and overconfidently; he assumed that, because of his wealth and power, he could control his own future. Little did he know, however, that that future was not guaranteed to him. Again, Mikhail’s smile is symbolically tied to one of God’s divine truths.
Themes
But, Mikhail continues, he did not learn the answer to the third question—“what men live by”—until today, when he again saw the twins whose mother he had pitied. Realizing that the twins are alive and well, and witnessing their adoptive mother’s total devotion and love for them, Mikhail now understands his previous error—that is, he understands why God had to punish him. Mikhail had believed the twins’ mother when she said that her babies could not live without father or mother. But, as he now sees, this claim was not true: what the twins needed to live was not biological parents but merely love.
The story of Mikhail’s mistake brings together and reinforces all three lessons. Marya’s love for her adoptive daughters shows, again, that what dwells in man is love. The twins’ mother’s mistaken belief—that her twins would definitely die without her—demonstrates, again, what is not given to mortal men: knowledge of when or how people will die. And Mikhail’s own error, he now understands, was a misunderstanding of what men live by. He believed the dying woman’s assertion that her twins would die without her—that is, that what people live by is their parents’ care. Now, having seen how the twins survived without mother or father, Mikhail understands that this is not true: what men live by is the love of other people in general, not necessarily their parents’ love.
Themes
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