Bartek from the Sawmill

Bartek from the Sawmill is a wage-earning villager whose work does not isolate him from Lipce’s poor. Though he has employment, he repeatedly stands with those facing winter hunger and the loss of expected logging work. His interventions connect the immediate need for wages with the villagers’ wider claims against the Squire, making him a practical advocate in a community divided by wealth and self-interest.

Identity and Position in the Village

The novel gives little personal history for Bartek: it identifies him by his work at the sawmill and shows him through his conduct among the villagers. He is not one of the landholding farmers whose household income might cushion a bad season. Instead, he belongs to the world of wage labor and irregular work, while having enough employment to be less economically exposed than the poorest families. That relative security matters: the narration emphasizes that he stands by the poor even though he himself has work.

Lipce’s winter economy gives his support a concrete urgency. Hired hands and cottage-owning laborers scrape by through threshing, mill work, and whatever other jobs they can find, while about five families have no village work at all during winter. Many households have little or no money set aside, potatoes are running out or have frozen, and some people eat a hot meal only once a day. The hoped-for felling at Wolf’s Hollow had seemed likely to provide work for everyone. The Squire’s refusal to employ a single man from Lipce therefore threatens more than a lost opportunity: it removes a source of relief at the moment when hunger is already pressing.

Organizing for Work and Relief

When the poorer villagers decide to seek advice, they first approach Kłąb the Elder and ask him to lead them to the priest. He declines, citing his daughter’s betrothal, and others also avoid taking responsibility, preoccupied with their own interests. Bartek is angered by this retreat. He joins four other men—Filip from over the pond, Stach, Bartek Kozioł, and Walek—in going to the priest to ask him to intercede with the Squire.

The delegation’s action is practical rather than ceremonial: the men are asking for intervention that might restore access to work. Their appeal also exposes the weakness of village solidarity. Even as winter hardship bears down on families, some better-positioned residents hesitate to risk their standing or interests on behalf of the poor. Bartek’s decision to go with the delegation marks him as someone willing to act where others withdraw.

At the inn, he reports what the priest has told the men and speaks forcefully against the Squire. The scene makes clear that their complaint does not easily unite the village. Farmers turn away from the dispute, while the Rzepki villagers, who have been sitting there since early in the day, remain conspicuously separate from the crowd. Bartek’s anger is audible, but it does not immediately command the room; the social divisions that have weakened the delegation continue to shape the public gathering.

The Land Dispute and the Squire’s Authority

Bartek also explains the dispute over the amount the Squire must concede. When a villager questions what is actually owed and leaves the matter to officials, Bartek answers that the commissioner himself said they should not settle for two morgen. In his account, the Squire must give more. The exchange places Bartek within a struggle over both employment and the terms of a land settlement, and shows him drawing on what he has heard from official channels to support the villagers’ demand.

The distinction between these claims matters. The immediate refusal to hire Lipce men makes the need for work acute, while the argument over two morgen concerns what the Squire should concede in the broader dispute. Bartek treats neither as an isolated grievance: in the inn he condemns the Squire’s conduct, and in explaining the commissioner’s position he insists that a minimal settlement will not answer the villagers’ claim. His advocacy thus combines the immediate pressure of poverty with a more sustained insistence on what the community is owed.

Alliances and Narrative Significance

Pan Jacek the violinist, the Squire’s brother, notices Bartek at the inn and goes to stand beside him near the Rzepki villagers. The episode does not specify what they discuss or establish a formal alliance, but the placement brings Bartek into the presence of a member of the Squire’s own family. Pan Jacek is described as a man who moves among villages, helps people, and plays the fiddle; his approach offers a brief counterpoint to the divisions surrounding the logging dispute without resolving them.

Bartek’s advocacy reflects the novel’s account of poverty as a collective condition made worse by decisions taken elsewhere. The later account of destitute households describes hunger, families without credit, and fields left fallow because men are imprisoned; it also condemns prosperous villagers who leave the poor to divine providence while protecting their own comfort. Those conditions clarify the stakes of the work Bartek seeks, though the novel does not make him responsible for every later effort to oppose the Squire. His established role is narrower and concrete: he refuses to treat the poor laborers’ need as someone else’s concern, and he gives public voice to a grievance that wealthier villagers would rather leave unanswered.