George Saunders on Leo Tolstoy

What to make of "Alyosha the Pot"

A late story by Tolstoy, "Alyosha the Pot," begins with its main character's childhood, but swiftly Alyosha is 19 years old and hired out to work for a local merchant. The merchant doesn't like Alyosha, yells at him, and works him to the bone, and his father takes his wages. But Alyosha works hard and does what he's told, and he always has a smile on his face. Then something good happens: Alyosha and the cook fall in love. When Alyosha proposes marriage his boss and his father forbid it; and he acquiesces. Alyosha "went on living the way he had before." Then one day while cleaning snow off the roof Alyosha falls, and after a few days in bed he dies from his injuries. The end.

The story is far more engaging than this summary, and when reading it, you want to figure Alyosha out. You want to know how to think and feel about him. Should you pity him? He does not get many good things in his life. Or maybe you should admire him: he's a cheery person who's always smiling and doesn't let others' cruelty crush his spirit. Maybe he has a deep spiritual gift. But maybe his imperturbability goes too far; maybe you should condemn him for failing to stand up for what's good for him and the woman he loves.

Any moderately interesting character inspires this kind of uncertainty, and it can draw you to read the story again, to look for details you missed, or for missed meanings of details you remember. As you learn more, and put the pieces of what you know together, your attitude toward the character might change—or harden.

You aren't doing this alone. Even if you don't discuss the story with friends, or in a book club or a classroom, usually the story itself (in some way) has, or is infused with, attitudes or opinions about the characters; and those attitudes and opinions inform the ones you explore and finally land on. By the end of Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennet admires Mr Darcy—and so does the novel itself; the novel endorses Elizabeth's attitudes in a way it does not, for example, endorse her mother's. And this endorsement may be part of what pushes you to admire him as well.

To return to Tolstoy's story, then: to know what to make of Alyosha it can help to know what "Alyosha," the story itself, makes of him.