Personal Response—Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy

In my point of view, the best character was Vasili, although he was the bad guy in the story he had a good development because we saw how he treated Nikita, we saw how he really was as a person, how the little details made him; his wife was irrelevant to him because we don’t even know her name, also how at the beginning he was always thinking about business and at one point he started to think it was his fault that they where on the snow storm and tried to think about him again but he couldn’t. It is a character that the small details give us an idea of what he is like and what he is capable of doing because of his selfishness. Nikita is a good character but nevertheless, he stresses me out too much, because he lets himself be treated badly by Vasili and thinks that Vasili is making him any good. He is always on his own world and has no direction in life, no goal, not even his family, Vasili knew where he wanted to go but he didn’t. Besides he is very naive and never thinks about himself and what his actions can lead to. I understand that people should not be selfish but they should think about themselves also.

I didn’t like the story because I felt it was moving too slowly. In the end I liked it because at last there was some action, in the previous chapters it was always the same, Vasili was selfish, worried about money and treated Nikita badly and Nikita left that attitude to him because he was a very blind person. The story is not realistic at all because a person can’t change from one moment to another, also a person can’t be so unintelligent not to feel hate for someone who did you a lot of harm, almost letting you die.

The ending was a little bit strange because the bad guy became good, but sometimes it made me doubt if Vasili was going to change. I liked that they added Nikita’s faith, this gave us an idea of what was kind of his goal of life, and who was really his Chief Master. I would have liked to know a little more about his life after Vasili’s death and what changed in him, a little bit of after story and was aspects changed in his personal life, like little bit more of context. I didn’t like the language at all because it was difficult to understand, and since English is my second language, it is quite difficult to understand reading with that weird formal language.

One of the most shocking images for me was how I imagined that the two of them were super bad from hypothermia and that Nikita was about to die. Also Vasili hugged him and waited for himself to die to save hugging his friend. I was also very intrigued by Nikita’s physique, I imagined him as a tall person but with a warm and beautiful smile, someone fat but strong, always wearing the same clothes, I amigined Vasili as a skinny and verb tall person, he never had a smile and wore expensive clothing.

I liked the structure because it was given in chronological order, there were no big time jumps and it was quite well organized.

One of the connections that I feel are left in the world is how there are bad people who don’t care about all the bad they can do, I feel that we also live in a world where power matters a lot in how you treat people; people are corrupted by money and think that you don’t matter for the social and economic status. Also conniving people know with whom it is convenient for them to deal badly and well without treating all people with respect. Nikita’s character is very unrealistic to me because he’s so good and there aren’t many of those people in the world anymore. Also, there are no people who don’t know the dangers that are out there.

One connection with the characters that I see myself in is that Vasili is not a hypocrite, he could be the worst person that you are going to know but is going to show himself of how he really is. Also Nikita is a person who doesn’t like seeing people suffer even when I don’t like that person I don’t like seeing them suffer.