“The pot oft calls the kettle black.”

“The pot oft calls the kettle black” is a proverb of self-implicating accusation: the person condemning another may share the very fault he claims to expose. In the exchange surrounding Jagna and Antek, it punctures a man’s certainty that his suspicions and retaliation amount simply to defending what is his.

Wording and Context

The man has found Jagna’s apron at the fence and concluded that she must have been meeting Antek. He will not be persuaded otherwise, and the dispute hardens when he insists, “Defending your own is no wrong!” The proverb enters as Dominikowa answers his certainty, not as an abstract observation but as a warning that accusations can reveal the accuser’s own hypocrisy.

Justice and Retaliation

The exchange sets the proverb within a dispute about the limits of self-defense. Dominikowa argues that an injury may be answered, but that doing wrong to someone unjustly breeds revenge. Against the man’s claim that defending one’s own cannot be wrong, the proverb unsettles the boundary he draws between justified protection and blameworthy conduct: conviction alone does not make his actions fair.

Narrative Function

The saying condenses the exchange’s central tension into a familiar image of reciprocal blame. The man rejects Dominikowa’s preaching and proverbs, yet the proverb continues to resonate beyond the quarrel: his obstinacy persists, while at night Jagna’s weeping makes him start as if to go to her before he checks himself and pretends to inspect the window or doors. The proverb’s force lies in that contrast between his declared certainty and the unsettled behavior that follows.