After the Ball, by Leo Tolstoy: The Impact of Cultural Objects on Individual Social Identity

When reading Leo Tolstoy’s After the Ball, the impression of ideology shaping judgment, or perception of the world, is delivered in the first line. The concept that good and bad may just be a matter of perspective is a large part of this short story, especially in how your “environment” or ideology causes you to value things differently. In this paper I will look to explore how ideological sign-exchange value of objects in Ivan Vasilyevich’s experience at the ball, as well as in life, can have multiple meanings, and how those values affect an individual’s stature in class structure.

Assigning cultural value to objects is done in both positive and negative manners, and the value of things can change based on its actual use, how a box can be used to store things as well as what you leave your office with when you get fired, for example. However in that instance, value is assigned by how it reflects status, and losing a job automatically puts you in a class of the jobless, where as storing things could represent accumulation. This is important when looking at After the Ball, as throughout the first half of his recollection how his “whole life was changed by a single night (Tolstoy, 595), the references to how he values certain objects and places the people associated them is using this same concept.

When Ivan first arrives, and is describing the ball, he references the charming nature of the ballroom amongst other pleasantries, but makes sure to recount that the singers and musicians were serfs, belonging to a certain landowner. His representation of the ball already takes on lofty characteristics of a lavish soirée, and with music provided by the “owned” lower class, who are lent to parties for amusement it only furthers the impr...

... middle of paper ...

...lt that since he did not uncover the truth behind the life of this class on his own, but found out by pure chance, that he was not worthy to partake in their ways.

The changing sign-exchange value is an extremely interesting development within After the Ball, and plays an important part in how we look at ideologies in the world. Everything possesses multiple meanings, and our perspectives often are based on our partially informed perception of what we see. Often the truth comes to us by chance, as Ivan Vasilyevich explains, and when it does, it often causes us conflict by allowing us to see our station in life in different ways. While the common expectation when seeing the dark side of our expectations of the world may be to reject it, often, as in this story, we are left conflicted and insecure about our place within the ideology, that we perhaps do not belong.