"Master and Man" is unlike any of the other stories in The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories. For the first time in this collection Tolstoy writes about a peasant.
Every other story features the lives and problems of members of the middle class. Peasants and other labourers are mentioned, but never at any length. They're just the ones keeping the basis of society running. "Master and Man," no doubt to make a point in the end, instead puts Nikita, one of these labourers, front and center.
The style of Tolstoy's writing has also changed over the six years between The Kreutzer Sonata and "Master and Man." No longer does Tolstoy explicitly dwell on the interior lives of his characters. Instead, things are more active (the main action of "Master and Man" being a sledge trip to a nearby village in a light snowstorm), and characters are drawn less through description than through action.
Nonetheless, after over twenty pages I have the same sense of disorientation as the main characters (likely in part due to my utter lack of knowledge of Russian geography).
Noting this lost feeling might sound backhanded, but it's very clear that being so lost is part of the story's point.
Putting his characters, Andreev (the master) Nikita (the man), into a snowstorm is putting them into a liminal space. A space in which not even the snow-laden landscape is stable, try as people might to make it so with markers and signs.
In such a space it's hard to say how Tolstoy will make his point (whatever it is), and that spurs me on.
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