1. Discuss what is meant by the statement that”So-called great men serve as visible signs of a process forever concealed.” (In your own words, try to restate the discussion from the commentaries on Tolstoy’s Second Epilogue.) 2. What does Napoleon symbolize for Prince Andrey and Pierre in Book I? How […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsCritical Essays Technical Devices Used in War and Peace
Transitions According to Le Vicompte E. Melchior de Vogue in The Russian Novel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1916), War and Peace is”a unique alliance between the grand spirit of an epic and that of minute analysis.” This”unique alliance” derives from Tolstoy’s careful craftsmanship, only a few significant devices of […]
Read more Critical Essays Technical Devices Used in War and PeaceCritical Essays Themes in War and Peace
Tolstoy’s heroes have a single aim: they search for a way to live life without its transience and want of purpose. Andrey despairs of finding such a purpose when, in Book IX, he says life is a series”of senseless phenomena following one another without any connection.” Pierre, on the other […]
Read more Critical Essays Themes in War and PeaceCritical Essays Structure of War and Peace
War and Peace is of such epic proportions that its endless outpourings of martial history, personal saga, and social document carries the reader along as a helpless spectator caught up in the full tide of life. Percy Lubbock in The Craft of Fiction (New York: The Viking Press, 1957) says […]
Read more Critical Essays Structure of War and PeaceLeo Tolstoy Biography
Leo Nicolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) was the next to youngest of five children, descending from one of the oldest and best families in Russia. His youthful surroundings were of the upper-class gentry of the last period of serfdom. Though his life spanned the westernization of Russia, his early intellectual and cultural […]
Read more Leo Tolstoy BiographyCharacter Analysis Historical Figures
The characters of Napoleon, Murat, Rastoptchin, Speransky, and the other historical persons that appear throughout the novel are remarkable for their static nature. Compared to Tolstoy’s fictional heroes, who are always in process of”becoming” and are constantly responsive to personal and environmental challenges, these factually real characters never undergo change. […]
Read more Character Analysis Historical FiguresCharacter Analysis Nikolay Rostov
Very good at saying the obvious, Nikolay is unimaginative and conservative, a man of action rather than of ideas. Although his development does not chart a course of agonized illuminations, as do the careers of Andrey and Pierre, his adulthood maximizes the positive qualities of his personality; thus, with all […]
Read more Character Analysis Nikolay RostovCharacter Analysis Natasha Rostov
Natasha is Tolstoy’s ideal woman. Attractive and bewitching as a child, her expressiveness and spontaneity are the natural outpourings of a creature imbued with life forces. She is compassionate, intense, with a soul responsive to music and dance, Tolstoyan symbols of her emotional spontaneity, and every moment of her being […]
Read more Character Analysis Natasha RostovCharacter Analysis Prince Andrey Bolkonsky
Like his father, Andrey is the”best of his generation,” but is also a product of it. He sees how the rigid standards of his autocratic father isolate the old prince from his closest relations and how he suffers in a world of his own making. From this, the sensitive Andrey […]
Read more Character Analysis Prince Andrey BolkonskyCharacter Analysis Pierre Bezuhov
Perpetually prey to new ideas, a man of strong emotions, although lacking the will to control them, Pierre in many ways represents a typical Russian nobleman. He is the protagonist of the novel and expresses some of Tolstoy’s favorite personal beliefs. Lacking a legitimate father to provide him with a […]
Read more Character Analysis Pierre Bezuhov