Fearless Thomas
The main character of this story is forced to struggle with evil. He affirms that he is “a brave Cossack”. But when he comes face to face with the witch, as the author writes his “heart becomes cold”. And it seems that he will scuttle on the instant. The irony consists in that fact that Thomas is a swaggerer. The author ridicules his behavior.
All women are witches
Using this ironical expression about Russian women and asserting that “in Kiev all women in the market-place are witches”, the author doesn’t mean that they are evil spirits. He just sneers at their character. Women are very cunning, they always like to tittle-tattle and all men are henpecked, because they are “bewitched” by women.
Thomas’s greed
The second bad feature of Thomas is greediness. When the colonel chooses him to read the burial service for his daughter, he said: “I can manage to hold out for three nights and then the colonel will fill both my pockets with ducats.” The ironical is that Thomas doesn’t admit his negative feature and after some time his greediness destroys him.
