This is another folk tale of sorts, like “The Bet” and “The Head Gardener’s Story.” Unfortunately, it’s not a particularly original tale – merely the classic “careful what you wish for.”
A bitter, poor shoemaker sells his soul to the devil and finds that having his wishes satisfied is not, as it turns out, entirely satisfying.
It’s a pretty bland piece of work because (SPOILER ALERT) the devil is merely a fantasy of the shoemaker’s… And so, like the end of Alice in Wonderland, he comes to, and the world is as it was before. It was all a dream.
Not as charming as Alice in Wonderland, though.
Read this then that
“It was all a dream” is a piece of narrative trickery that Chekhov used as a crutch more than once. “The Looking Glass” is another odd bit of writing that essentially follows a character’s nervous fears down a rabbit hole, and then ends with a bit of a sigh when, it turns out, that nothing has happened at all.
A Chekhov Circus 