Four horsemen

Jair Hayes Mr. Buckingham Horsemen Essay 1 December 2011 Series of Unfortunate Events The four horsemen of the apocalypse appear in the story “ How Much Land does a Man Need? ” because they are all symbolical. The four horsemen are the horse of Conquest (white), War (Red), Black (Famine), and Pale (Death). These four horsemen are all symbolical in some way and all connect in the story in a important way. They help explain the series of events in Pakhom’s journey to his demise. The first horseman is conquest which is a white horse.

This is symbolic because Pakhom sets out on a conquest for so much land. He starts off with no land basically then he starts to get land. He next has 15 desyatins, and seems to be contempt with this land. Though, after a while he does set out to get to get more land which he acquires. Pakhom then realizes he can get even more land by going to these Indians to get as much land as he wants. Then he realizes that he has to pay 100 rubies a day to get as much as he wants. Before this though, we get introduced to the next horse which is war.

The next being war comes in when Pakhom gets his land. He realizes that people are messing with his land and he doesn’t like it. Though, the irony in that is the fact that he did the same thing when he had little to no land himself. After these events Pakhom took people to court and lost and would try to put peasants on trial. This caused a dispute between Pakhom and most of the commoners, meaning they didn’t get along. People are in a war because naturally they don’t get along. Though, you have to make sacrifices in war which brings in the next horse.

The next horseman is famine which is represented by black. This one is more metaphorical I feel then literal. For Pakhom to afford all this land he sold many things. Eventually he sold almost everything he had. He went into a personal need or possession famine. Pakhom also went into a morals famine. He basically left everything behind just for land and nothing else, which in hindsight makes no sense. If you don’t havemoneyto even buy seeds, he why would you need land. He didn’t even have a horse anymore because he sold it. He could have used his horse to plow the fields.

Pakhom became very greedy which leads to the final horse. The last horse is the horseman of death which is a pale color. This horse is obviously representing the death of the main character Pakhom. Pakhom became too greedy and unnecessarily needy. When he keeps going on at the end of the story for the land he should have realized he didn’t need that much land to begin with. If you have to walk more than a mile or three to plant or plow crops then you have too much land I personally feel. These are how these four horseman of the apocalypse connect in the story.