Antek’s jealousy and inner conflict over Jagna

Antek’s jealousy over Jagna exposes a conflict he cannot resolve: he feels possessive of her, yet when the village turns against her he publicly submits to its judgment. His anguish surfaces in private barbs, a rigid declaration of solidarity with the villagers, and the strained labor with which he tries to endure Jagna’s punishment without intervening.

Jealousy and concealment

Antek’s jealousy is stirred by reports that Jagna meets Jasio in the woods or on the field baulks. One speaker claims not to spy on her or care what she does, then admits that others see the meetings every day. The exchange makes gossip the route by which Antek’s private attachment becomes an object of public knowledge. A suggestion to silence the talk with a smack does not resolve the matter; it leads Antek to voice the sudden, terrible force of his jealousy.

His thoughts turn not only to Jagna’s meetings with Jasio but also to the possibility of Mateusz marrying her. The prospect snaps at him like rabid dogs. Antek does not answer Mateusz’s truculent words, because he fears that a response would expose his anguish. At their parting, however, he cannot keep silent: with a nasty laugh, he remarks that whoever marries Jagna will have plenty of brothers-in-law. The joke disguises a possessive wound as mockery. It lets him allude to her desirability and the rivalry around her without admitting directly that he cares who claims her.

Choosing the village

That concealed attachment is tested when the villagers gather to decide Jagusia’s fate. The crowd invokes its authority to punish and reward and calls for her expulsion. Accounts of her conduct and grievances against her circulate through the meeting; the organist’s wife repeatedly tells the story about Jasio, while the Voyt’s wife recounts her own wrongs. Voices overlap until the gathering sounds like a fair, and individual testimony gives way to a noisy collective verdict.

Antek says nothing at first. At the inn he stands beside the bar, pale and jaw clenched, drinking glass after glass and cursing quietly. He imagines seizing a bench and smashing it across the shouting crowd, but the impulse remains unacted. When Płoszka asks him in front of everyone to give his opinion, the inn falls silent. The villagers expect him to object; instead, Antek sighs, straightens, and declares, “I live in the village, and I stand with the village!” He accepts the expulsion even while adding that the villagers could just as well put Jagusia on an altar. Then he pushes past the arms blocking his way and leaves without looking at anyone.

His declaration is more than silence: it makes allegiance to the village his public answer to a personal crisis. Yet his bitter comparison between banishment and exaltation suggests contempt for the crowd’s power to condemn or celebrate her at will. The response neither proves that he has ceased to care nor turns him into her defender. It records a choice to stand with the community when Jagusia needs someone to oppose it.

Private anguish and attempted restraint

Afterward, another man accuses Antek of holding a grudge against Jagna. Antek answers grimly that whether he bears one is no one else’s concern. The narration describes loves and jealousies knotted within him, vivid but hidden, and likens his inward disturbance to a moaning tree tossed by a gale. His remark protects the feeling from scrutiny without denying its presence. When he looks around, Mateusz is gone, and the village seems alien and loathsome to him: the community he has just claimed as his own has become difficult to bear.

As more people gather in the organist’s farmyard, Antek takes up his scythe and goes to the fields by the forest. Wind tangles the rye and throws sand into his eyes as he begins to mow, listening to the murmur from the village. The work gives his hands something to do while his attention remains with the crowd. At the thought that Jagusia’s expulsion may be happening, his heart pounds; anger nearly makes him throw down the scythe and run to her rescue. He pulls himself back and repeats, “Let the one who’s guilty bear the punishment. Let it be, let it be.”

The maxim offers a rationale for inaction, but the scene makes its cost visible. Antek’s eyes can scarcely see the field; he seems almost to be beside Jagusia, while his trained hands continue cutting swathe after swathe. The wind carries a long cry from the village. He remains at work rather than going to stop the punishment, but the strain of mowing and listening shows that his withdrawal is not emotional indifference.

The limits of his allegiance

Across these scenes, Antek repeatedly converts feeling into concealment: jealousy becomes a spiteful joke, attachment becomes a public claim to stand with the village, and the urge to intervene is checked by an appeal to guilt and punishment. His conduct holds two positions together without reconciling them. He resents the crowd and imagines breaking its noisy assembly, yet accepts its decision; he tells himself to let the guilty bear punishment, yet cannot keep his attention from the person being punished.

The episode makes his divided loyalty consequential. His anguish does not become protection for Jagusia, and the villagers’ verdict proceeds while he is in the fields. His inward turmoil therefore registers both the persistence of his desire and the limits of what he will risk for it. The scythe keeps moving as the cry rises from the village: an image of labor continuing beside an unaverted act of collective punishment.