Tolstoy's Use of His Characters to Bring Forth His Themes
In his novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
makes successful use of his characters to illustrate his themes and moral
vision. He most often accomplishes this through Anna Arkadyevna Karenina
and Konstantin Levin, the two characters that provide the contrast that defines
most of Tolstoy's themes. Anna and Levin interact with a variety of characters
throughout the book, to illuminate the themes of sin, and society that Tolstoy
wanted to present to his reader. Whether these issues were moral, religious
or social, Tolstoy used these characters to convey his thoughts to his audience.
Tolstoy's form also plays an important role in creating
and upholding the contrasts between the two characters and the implications
of their thoughts and actions. That is, the way the book is written, the actual
layout and progression of the chapters and parts serves the definite purpose
of establishing a pattern in the reader's mind.
The form of the novel is designed to keep our feelings
and thoughts continuously stirred and unsettled, especially with regard to
the powerful figure who gives the novel its name. Anna is definitely superior
to all others in her elite social set, but although we sympathize with her
position, the novel's form exerts a steady pressure on our sympathy, creating
disapproval and even condemnation. Tolstoy achieves this by means of an
alternating double plot in which true love is counterpointed against immoral
love: while one is blossoming, the other is disintegrating. This pressure
is exerted at certain points or connecting links between the two plots as
well as through the patterning of the segments themselves.
For instance, in Part Five, Levin's fear of death
strengthens his union with Kitty, leading, in Part Seven, to the birth of
a son; Anna, in Part Six, having abandoned her son, exasperates [Vronsky[
to heighten his ardor. Fear of death tightens their union also, and leads,
in Part Seven, to her suicide. Levin's jealous fits in Part Six express
his vexation with Kitty for not being able to allay his fear of death; similarly,
Anna rages at Vronsky for not allaying her despair. In the "right" union,
jealousy is laughable; in the "wrong" union it is devastating.
One discovers the moral vision of Anna Karenina
by interpreting the design of the double plot and the narrator's point of
view. Tolstoy speaks directly through authorial comment and similes and
indirectly through the structure; that is, the points at which the two plots
touch, characters are contrasted, etc. The action of the double plot contrasts
the true and immoral love, just as it contrast the two characters. Edward Wasiolek
touches on this in his novel Tolstoy's Major Fiction:
While Anna is falling in love with Vronsky,
Levin is being rejected by Kitty. When Kitty and Levin are falling in
love, Anna is on her deathbed, attempting to reconcile herself to Karenin,
struggling to give up Vronsky. As Anna and Vronsky leave Russia to begin
their restless and aimless travels, Kitty and Levin are married. When Anna
and Vronsky return to Moscow to make one desperate attempt to get a divorce
and resolve their situation, Kitty is having a baby, finding new bonds of
love and companionship with Levin. When Anna kills herself, Levin finds
the secret of life in the words of an ignorant peasant. By and large, the novel
describes the deterioration of Anna's and Vronsky's love and the growth
toward maturity of Kitty's and Levin's love.
This pattern of passages sets up a structure that the characters flesh out; especially
Anna and
Levin.
Tolstoy speaks to the reader through their thought and actions,
allowing us to form a clearer idea of these themes as the novel progresses and
we obtain an idea of the characters and
what makes them tick.
Tolstoy introduces
Anna to us, through
Dolly's eyes,
as a sweet and beautiful woman who arrives to mediate a dispute between
Dolly
and her husband
Stiva, also
Anna's brother. She is presented as a sympathetic
and loving character, worthy of the reader's
adoration.
Anna also befriends
Kitty, the young woman
Levin
is in love with.
Kitty looks up to
Anna and finds a basis for behavior and
conduct at this stage in her life when she is looking for purpose and is still
malleable.
Kitty, and thus the
reader, see
Anna as a
maternal figure,
full of
moral dignity and the capacity for
unconditional love.
However, her growing love for
Vronsky and distaste for
Karenin begin to change the reader's opinion of her character. She becomes
naive,
gullible and even
stupid in that she plunges her life into
chaos on a
whim,
assuming that she will find comfort and support in
Vronsky. She begins to lose
the reader's sympathy when she pursues
Vronsky, disregarding
Kitty's feelings
and both social and moral
deportment;
Tolstoy has injected
sin and its repercussions
into his tale. This is exemplified when
Anna is mulling over her situation and
thinks: "I realized that I was alive and that I was not to blame, that
God had
made me so that I need to love and live." She tries to shift the blame from herself
and rationalize her position, even going as far as to lay blame at
God's feet,
when she has in fact sinned against
Him.
Is
Anna sinful, or is she justified and thus absolved
due to the fact that she is escaping a cold and indifferent husband who has subjected
her to years of
torment? This issue of
sin and
morality is a major theme
in the book. Indeed, along with
Levin's search for
religious truth and fulfillment,
it may be considered the
major theme of the
novel. In her search for contentment,
the reader's opinion of
Anna may sway, but the fact that she has sinned is always
driven home. This can be seen in her inability to find happiness or
true love.
She choose passion and lust, both sinful, thus forfeiting the right and access
to
true love. She is never quite content with
Vronsky and even falls back
on
morphine, attempting escape from the enormity of her situation and her
sin.
Levin on the other hand is a morally upstanding character
who won't compromise his morals and values for social and materialistic gains.
His ties to the peasants and their
rural life makes him
down-to-earth and
realistic; more
wholesome if you will. His clear and unstained conscience effectively
balances out
Anna's guilty one.
Levin embodies the new
Russian ideals; democratic
and interested in the
welfare of the people because he has realized that there
is much good in them; they are pure in their
simplicity. He also has very sound
philosophical ideas, even though he is looked down upon by the 'true philosophers.'
Combined with his good business sense, this makes him a well-rounded character
capable of clear thought and well thought out actions.
Working on and running a farm, obtaining what one needs
from the earth, is similar to
American Transcendentalist thought in the early
19th century.
Levin exemplifies
Emerson's words in his essay
Self Reliance.
"Whoso would be a man must be a
nonconformist. He who would gather immortal
palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be
goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the
integrity of your own mind."
Levin's
personal philosophy parallels these ideas to a great extent: this connection can
be seen in Levin's quote: "I enjoy what I have and don't fret for what I don't
have."
Levin confesses that it is impossible for a rationalist
and natural scientist like himself to believe in
God, and yet his chief traits
and actions testify to an unconscious longing for
God--his hatred of city life,
his rebirth of the soul when returning to the land, his efforts at
chastity,
his attraction to the sweet and innocent
Kitty, and his guilt at being a landlord
and exploiter. He ends by realizing that he had been seeking salvation all along;
he had been living, without knowing it, as if life were exceedingly difficult
without
God.
Anna, by contrast, dies because she's unable to sublimate
her
sexual passion. The double plot of the novel offers two alternatives for
Levin and
Anna, that is, for strong personalities who are forthright and passionate--
faith
or
suicide.
The choices these characters make represent the message
Tolstoy is trying to convey to the reader.
Levin is often seen as
Tolstoy
himself, as they share some of the same beliefs and values. Through both
Anna
and
Levin,
Tolstoy comments on
Russian high society as both display a disgust
for it.
Anna because she has been severed from society due to her union with
Vronsky and
Levin because he has always rejected it.
Tolstoy was regarded by
Lenin as the "
poet of the
peasant revolt."
Tolstoy mirrored this
epoch of widespread social
unrest,
which lasted from the abolition of
serfdom in 1861 to the revolution of 1905,
faithfully recording the transformation of
society caused by the growth of
capitalism,
as stated in the
Encyclopedia Britannica. This interest, and the purpose of
capitalism, which
bureaucratized the
Russian nobility, is the protection,
by any and every means, even the most
brutal, of the private property of the
ruling classes.
Levin personalized this change as he was the connection between
society and the peasants, as far as the novel was concerned.
In
Anna Karenina,
Tolstoy's representation of
Levin's
life as the right life, a life of
moral dignity, is set in opposition to
Anna's
catastrophic passion.
Levin embodies the morality that
Anna violates; the
double plot is a narrative device, a means of illuminating
Anna's tragedy
and
Levin's salvation. Yet
Anna's loveless marriage to a
frigid husband
compels our sympathy; we admire her and at the same time see that
Tolstoy has
no patience for the cultured society that judges her. Society has a negative effect
on
human nature; it is based on experience and represents the power of the majority
over the individual. This is what angered
Tolstoy, and what he conveyed to the
reader through his characters.