Antek’s proposal to stop the felling

Antek Boryna’s proposal to stop the felling transforms a shared grievance into a practical demand for collective action: the whole village should go to the forest and prevent the logging until The Squire agrees to terms with the villagers. The plan grows out of anger at the manor’s control of the woodland and the villagers’ inability to secure redress through discussion or legal complaint. It also exposes a fault line within the village: farmers hold authority and land, while hired hands fear that their own claims count for little. In the later gathering, the proposal becomes a mass march, led by Maciej Boryna and answered by villagers who prepare to defend what they regard as theirs.

Background: opposition without a plan

At the Lipce inn, the conversation turns to a council about the forest held at Kłąb’s during Christmas. Antek has been distracted, glancing toward the door in the hope that Jagna will come, but the report of the council draws his attention. The gathering had agreed that the felling should not be allowed to proceed, yet the speakers describe no settled means of enforcing that decision. Their account makes the weakness of a merely verbal protest plain: the villagers have voiced opposition, but the woodland is still at risk.

The talk is already shaped by divisions over who is entitled to act. Płoszka complains that when he previously spoke against the manor’s plans, his father told him to keep out of a matter belonging to the farmers. He describes the resulting hierarchy bluntly: the farmers hold everything, while people like him count for no more than farmhands. His grievance is therefore not only about the trees. The dispute also concerns whose voice matters in village affairs and who may claim to defend communal interests.

Mateusz cuts through the fatalism with the insistence that The Squire cannot simply be allowed to fell the forest. When the others ask who will stop him, the answer turns the question back on the assembled villagers: “Who, if not you?” The exchange shifts responsibility away from an absent authority or an ineffectual council and toward the people present. It prepares the ground for a proposal based not on another complaint, but on coordinated action.

Antek’s proposal and the question of leadership

A further round of discussion begins when Szymek Pacześ steps forward to air his grievances, though he is unused to speaking publicly and soon falls silent amid the others’ laughter. Grzela Rakoski then argues that the elders should not be left in charge of the forest matter, because they will ruin it. The young men’s discussion thus challenges not only the manor’s power but also the assumption that village elders alone should decide how to answer it.

Antek states the plan firmly: when the felling begins, the whole village should go out and drive the loggers away, refusing to let the work proceed until The Squire reaches an agreement with the village. The proposal gives the earlier council’s opposition an immediate form, a clear target, and a condition for ending the confrontation. It is not simply a call to defend the trees; it links the stopping of the work to a negotiated settlement between the manor and the community.

The idea is not wholly new. One speaker observes that the council at Kłąb’s had advised the same course. Antek’s distinction is that advice alone will not suffice: he asks who will actually stand together and carry it out. The farmers might join, but not all are certain to do so. Some answer that they will follow if Maciej Boryna leads; when doubt is raised about whether he will agree, another voice declares, “Antek will, then.” The exchange marks Antek as a possible leader precisely when the villagers are unsure whether the established leader will act.

Grzela Rakoski offers a competing approach. Having read the newspaper Zorza, he warns that violence will end in court and imprisonment, and recommends bringing a lawyer from town to settle the matter fairly. The group does not listen for long, and some scoff at him. Their disagreement puts the stakes of Antek’s proposal in view: direct intervention could unite the village around its claim, but it also risks bringing legal punishment upon those who take part. The argument does not erase that danger; it shows why the choice between collective action and legal recourse is a consequential one.

From discussion to mass action

Later, a crowd fills the square in front of the inn and waits for the elders, who have gone to fetch Maciej Boryna. The waiting itself reveals the strength of the village’s customary leadership: he is regarded as first among the villagers, and the narration observes that no farmer would take a step without him. At the same time, the threatened logging has drawn together a much wider body than the farmers alone. The crowd includes peasants, hired hands, women, and older children.

When Antek addresses them, he frames the felling as the latest in a series of injuries. He recalls that the manor is cutting down the villagers’ forest, has refused them employment, and continually drives them toward ruin; he also invokes past confiscations, wrongs, and unsuccessful complaints to the courts. His speech makes the forest dispute part of a broader history of grievance. Since complaints and litigation have not secured justice, he urges the people to go together and stop the logging, insisting that they defend their rights as a village.

The crowd answers with the cry, “To the forest!” Then the appeal becomes organized movement. People hurry home to change, harness animals, and bring out sleighs. They gather with poles, pitchforks, flails, and, here and there, a scythe. Some travel by sleigh, horse, or cart; many set out on foot. The armed procession is described as broad and dense, but its members move grimly, without the laughter or joking of an ordinary trip to the fields. At the meeting point on the poplar road, Maciej Boryna is waiting on his sleigh with other leaders. He stands, crosses himself, and gives the signal to go.

Significance: a claim made collective

The movement from the Christmas discussion to the march shows what Antek’s proposal contributes to the conflict. The first conversation identifies the failure of the council to go beyond opposition; the later gathering supplies the numbers, preparation, and leadership that could make resistance effective. The demand is collective in both its language and its composition: the whole village is summoned, including people whose position as hired hands had been used to exclude them from decisions.

The episode also preserves tensions within that unity. Some villagers fear prison and favor a lawyer; the earlier debate reveals uncertainty about whether all farmers will participate and whether Maciej Boryna will lead. The eventual march does not make those disagreements disappear. Instead, it shows how urgency over the forest temporarily gathers different groups around a common action, while leadership is shared between Antek’s call for resistance and Maciej Boryna’s recognized authority. The forest is at once a material resource under threat and the focus of a village claim to act together when other avenues have failed.