The narrator’s closing remark (Verbal Irony)
"Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed" (24).
After the workman buries Pahom in a small, six-foot grave, the narrator concludes the story with this ironic, poignant declaration. The quote invokes verbal irony to illustrate the futility of Pahom’s devotion to cultivating land, wealth, and prosperity. He travels hundreds of miles, purchases hundreds of acres of land, drifts from commune to commune without forging meaningful connections, becomes a pariah, and abandons his family—all for an insatiable desire for land. His greed becomes so all-consuming that it fuels him beyond physical limits to claim as much Bashkirian land as possible, naturally culminating in his death of exhaustion. However, the narrator does not acknowledge any of these efforts. Rather, by claiming that Pahom only needs six feet of land, the closing remark sardonically understates and refutes Pahom’s grand and overzealous exertions, all of which lead, in the end, to a small grave. Despite all the land Pahom acquires over years, he only needs six feet of soil to bury his body into the ground. The understatement thus reveals the counterproductivity of chasing wealth: no matter how much material success we achieve in life, we cannot escape the inevitability of death.
The Devil's first appearance (Dramatic Irony)
After Pahom overhears the sisters’ argument, he posits that land ownership will protect him from the Devil or evil exterior forces ("If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!"). However, subsequent paragraphs reveal that the Devil overheard Pahom’s postulation. The Devil then vows to use his power to give Pahom land, while steering him down a trajectory of greed, vanity, and selfishness. Dramatic irony thus pervades Pahom’s assertion: we know that the Devil is listening and will guide Pahom into a life of sin, but Pahom remains unaware of this. Our awareness of the Devil's appearance from the very beginning of the story instills the subsequent unfolding of events with foreboding dread and suspense.
