Alyosha the Pot Summary

Alyosha is a goodhearted but simple young man who works so hard on his father's farm he can't go to school. Alyosha accepts this, as everything else in his life, with a shrug and a smile. His contemporaries ridicule him for his appearance and ca.ll him "the pot" because when his mother sends him to deliver a pot of milk, he stumbles and drops the ceramic pot, wasting all the milk. When his older brother joins the army, Alyosha's father places the 19-year-old with a merchant in town as a household servant. There Alyosha continues to work like a dog with little consideration for himself. The merchant, offended by the boy's shabby appearance, orders him to get new boots to replace the hand-me-downs from his brother that Alyosha wears. When Alyosha's father comes to collect his son's wages...