This is a sad little story about a poor man standing trial for stealing nuts from a rail bed–the nuts fasten the rails in place.
He steals them because he needs weights for fishing, and he can’t understand what harm he has done. After all, he reasons, the loss of a nut or two can hardly make a difference.
It’s possible that Chekhov means for this poor, ignorant man to be amusing–he has a sort of pathetic manner of speaking, muttering to himself as he responds to an increasingly exasperated judge.
But it’s mainly a sad story of poverty, ignorance, and power.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
This is not the only Chekhov story featuring a poor, helpless, and generally ignorant man grappling with the law–a force he has no apparent understanding of. “Darkness,” written two years after “A Malefactor,” is a bleak sketch of a poor, uneducated peasant seeking to free his brother from jail. In both stories, the poor folk–peasants–are pathetically incapable of interacting with the judicial system. And in both there is a whiff of meanness on Chekhov’s part. He can’t seem to help but find these fellows a little bit funny.
The stories are, at some level, a Russian version of minstrelsy: Hahaha, these dopey peasants with their feet wrapped in rags and their utter ignorance. What rubes! Not a good look for a great writer.
Both stories are memorable, though, for their portrayal of the staggering helplessness of peasants caught up in legal trouble.
A Chekhov Circus 