Linking the motif of the snowstorm with Brekhunov’s moral corruption, self-deception is rendered in both natural and psychological terms. The recurrent motif of ill-defined shapes (“something black”) appearing to the travelers suggests the limits of perspective, but these limits are also a matter of internal, ethical- religious self-understanding. Brekhunov is so guided by his concern for outward appearance that his understanding of himself is reduced to an image: “Who is talked of in the whole district now? Brekhunov! And why? Because I stick to business” (484). Many of his gestures, regardless of the situation, stem from this image of himself as a merchant: “uttering every word […] as he usually did when speaking to buyers and sellers” (457). In the end, Brekhunov reverses this claim, understanding himself as no different from Nikita: “[Brekhunov] was Nikita and Nikita was he” (498). Prior to this moment, Brekhunov deceives himself by justifying his exploitation of Nikita as benefaction.

Who Brekhunov is—the “man” of the title which he must become—is not the merchant he has fashioned himself as, nor the past accounts of where he was going and where he had come from: “In my father’s time what was our house like? Just a rich peasant’s house” (484).