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
Several more years pass, and Mikhail continues to be an invaluable addition to the family and business. He remains quiet and withdrawn. In fact, Matryona and Semyon have still only seen him smile twice—once on the night they first met him, and once when the gentleman came to commission the boots. One day, Mikhail and Semyon are working when one of Semyon’s children tells them that a group of people is approaching the house: a woman with two little girls, one of whom appears to be limping. Hearing this news, Mikhail immediately looks out the window in a way that strikes Semyon as strange—Mikhail has never before looked out the window while working.
Mystery continues to be Mikhail’s defining characteristic. It seems clear that he is, if not actually divine, a symbol for the divine, since he is miraculously wise and transcendent in the same way that God is portrayed in Christianity. Mikhail’s uncharacteristic reaction to the woman and little girls arriving implies that there is something significant about these people that the other characters aren’t aware of.
Themes
The woman and the girls enter the shop. The woman explains to Semyon that she wants to order shoes for the girls. The girl with the limp will need a special shoe for her lame foot, but otherwise the girls’ measurements will be the same, since they are identical twins. As Semyon is discussing the job with the woman, he notices that Mikhail is still behaving strangely: he has stopped working and is staring at the two girls. Semyon acknowledges that the girls are very pretty, but he doesn’t understand why Mikhail is looking at them so intently.
The overly attentive way that Mikhail looks at the girls recalls the way he looked at the gentleman several years before. In this case, however, he seems to be looking at the girls with affection rather than amusement (as was the case with the gentleman).
Themes
As Semyon measures the girls’ feet, he asks what happened to the girl with the limp. The woman explains that she wasn’t born with the disability but was crushed by her mother shortly after she was born. She also adds that she is not the girls’ mother, nor is she related to them at all. However, she adopted them, breastfed them, and loves them even more than her own biological son, who died in childhood. Semyon asks the woman what happened to the girls’ mother.
Whereas the gentleman attracted the other characters’ attention because of his horribly rude behavior, this woman is interesting because of her generosity. Her statement that she loves her adopted daughters even more than her real son is yet another testament to the idea that generosity (in this case, the woman adopting and breastfeeding the infant twins) can benefit the person giving help as well as the people receiving help.
Themes
