Anna Karenina - Lev Nikoláievich Tolstói

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, is a novel of grand themes. It is considered by some one of the greatest love stories in world literature. The novel focuses on passion and adultery, and also on family and the search for happiness. Tolstoy started writing Anna Karenina in 1873.

The novel centres on three couples: Anna and her husband, Oblonski and Daria Alexandrovna, and Levin and Kitty. Anna and Vronski’s relationship is doomed from the start. Anna's husband, Karenin, is described as “not a man, but a machine, and a vicious machine when he is angry". Anna and Vronski cannot find happiness together. They are “exposed to the gaze of all of society, obliged to conceal their love, to lie, to deceive, to pretend". Oblonski and Daria Alexandrovna’s marriage is not happy either. Oblonski is unfaithful and Daria Alexandrovna is left to look after their children. Levin and Kitty represent Tolstoy’s ideal couple. Levin, Tolstoy’s autobiographical character, finds meaning in family life in the countryside. However, the ending of the novel suggests that even Levin and Kitty’s happiness is not secure.

The novel also explores other important themes, including:

• Death: Many instances of death are included in the novel and the 20th chapter of the fifth part is even titled ‘Death’.
• Art: Tolstoy, through the character of the painter Mikhailov, explores the difference between ‘vocation and talent, attitude and talent’.
• Music: Tolstoy critiques Wagnerian music through the character of Levin.

The novel is written with great objectivity so that the reader cannot easily divide the characters into ‘guilty and innocent, victims and executioners, good and bad’. Tolstoy's style is highly detailed, with ‘swollen paragraphs overflowing with information … meticulous details … obsessive penetration’.

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