Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" is largely autobiographical andexpressive of his yearnings. His main character, Anna, exemplifies bothwhat he admires and what he repels in a woman. Anna embodies more thanhuman fullness in a lovable woman, specifically in the mother Tolstoy lostbefore he could be fully conscious and appreciate her. Anna also representsthe extents to which a woman can go, something, which, in Tolstoy's time, He could derive the idea of strong and nurturing womanhood from hisaunt that reared and sent him to school, which he did not finish. Even withthe nurturing he received from an aunt, the impress of a splintered familyhounded him in life and is basic in this novel. The fullness and extremes of human life in Anna and the foulness ofdeath in Tolstoy's experiences are both major themes in his novel. Withouta mother, he lost his father to murderers when Tolstoy was only 10. Hence,a sense of death prevails in the work. His struggle with mortality isreflected in Anna's person and so is his dissatisfaction towards the social His character, Alexei Vronsky, is a caricature of an anti-militaristic viewpoint Tolstoy developed whe
These extremes fight within Levin,who is caught between the peasants' instinctive ways and his (andTolstoy's) acceptance of Western agriculture science. n he joined the Russian army tofight in the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856. In his novel, Dostoyevsky strongly impresses that nihilism is empty andthat love is what gives meaning to life. The spread of nihilism should explain the darkness andforeboding in Dostoyevsky's mind prior to imprisonment and the darkness,criminality and despair in his character in the novel. The other issue that figures in the novel that was reflective of theauthor's circumstances was the prevalence of nihilism in Russia in the1850s and 1860s. He also believes that he is part of a race of elite supermen, like NapoleonBonaparte, who can violate moral standards for higher objectives, such asutilitarian good. Rasolnikov of the novel is clearly a nihilistin justifying his murders, based on utilitarian grounds, in that thevictims did not suit the purposes of the majority any longer. The conversion of Dostoyevsky back to conservative values parallelsRaskolnikov's deliverance from his pride and skepticism into humility andinner freedom when he falls in love with Sonya, although under differentcircumstances. The author focuses on thepotential, the hypothetical, criminal mind, how it operates and what it maytake to bring it to humility and the freedom of a confession of its guilt. In so doing, he appeared tohighlight the perception that the actual punishment of a crime is lessterrible than the anxiety and anguish of avoiding that punishment. And Dostoyevski's eight monthsin prison in Siberia is matched by Raskolnikov's nine months' imprisonmentin the same place. In Tolstoy'sgeneration, this was scandalous, and he makes that come alive in the novelthrough the horror expressed by Princess Shcherbatskaya that no one knewhow young people of Russia in the 1870s were to get married. Enhancing nihilism in the author's time and his character's wasutilitarianism, which believed that happiness should be a majoritydecision, not an individual right or freedom. In the author's time, social progressives weakened this foundation with theview that the family was backward and a limitation of individual freedom. With the samesearch and preferences, Levin is more than like the author in his being aloner who is not self-centered, as another loner may be.
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