Though Leo Tolstoy is most well-known for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which he wrote when he was in his forties, pieces written after he turned fifty were the ones that clearly established the philosophy known as Tolstoyism. Tolstoyism is a philosophy that denounces the "artificial r...

Leo Tolstoy is one of the greatest writers of the last two hundred years. His novels tend to convey an insight on life; whether it be about suffering, death, religion, art, or education. Tolstoy was a man with many strong beliefs, and one must understand these beliefs to fully understand the meaning...

Real Success In the Bible the Pharisees were the Jewish upper class. They socialized with the Roman governors and Israel's finest citizens. The Pharisees were the richest and most educated men in the area; they were also the leaders in the Hebrew society. They appeared to be the most successf...

Tolstoy wrote, in What is Art? " If a man is infected by the author's condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art: but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the same author and others who a...

"The Death of Ivan Illyich" is a book about a man's struggle with the idea that men are not as invincible as they seem and that we all must come to terms with the one very thing that none of us can escape from, and that is death. We may think about death in secondary terms, or we ...

"The Death of Ivan Ilych" is Leo Tolstoy's assertion of man's attitude and position in life. In an attempt to teach society the fallacy of propriety (conforming to society), he created this melancholy tale of the life and death of Ivan Ilych. A man whose main goal in life is to attain ...

When reading a piece of literature, a protagonist can often times make a discovery which can make the protagonist view life in a different way. This happens with Ivan Ilych, the protagonist in the short story, "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Upon making a dis...

Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy It had grown quite dark and to the south, where he was looking, there were no longer any clouds. The clouds had passed over in the opposite direction. From there came flashes of lightning and the sound of distant thunder. Levin listened to the regular dripping of th...

The Death of Ivan Ilych The short story, "The Death of Ivan Ilych," written by Leo Tolstoy, takes the reader through the life, the suffering, and the death of a man and the reactions of those around him. In the opening of the story, Tolstoy demonstrates the theme surrounding the charac...

Throughout the novel, there a many different themes. The book starts with "all happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"(part 1 ch.1), which introduces the themes of marriage, love, and family life. Moral, religious, class and society themes are also so...