Leo Tolstoy, author of Anna Karenina, was born in 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana. He was born into a wealthy Russian family. Tolstoy’s mother passed away when he was two years old and his father was murdered when he was nine. Due to being orphaned at such a young age, Tolstoy was very familiar with the concept of death and he makes this evident throughout all of his great works. Specifically in Anna Karenina, he symbolizes the power of death and mortality through Anna. Tolstoy was unsatisfied with his education and lacked interest in academics. In 1847, he left Kazan University without a degree. In 1851, he enlisted in the Russian army and served in the Crimean War. In 1862, Leo Tolstoy and Sofya Behrs got married and for the next two decades Tolstoy dedicated his time to raising his family. During this time he also wrote his two most famous novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Eventually, Tolstoy swayed from fiction to faith and religion. In November of 1910, Tolstoy became ill with pneumonia and passed away at the age of eighty-two. His work is still read and he is still remembered as...
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy tells the story of Ivan Ilyich, a man who deals with a mysterious illness through introspection. Until his illness, he lived the life he thought he was supposed to live. Like Candide, he was living in blind optimism. He assumed that what he was doing was the right thing because he was told as much. He had a respectable job and a family. Happiness, if it did occur to him, was fulfilling his duties as a husband and father. It was his sudden illness that allowed him to reflect on his choices, concluding that those choices did not make him happy. “Maybe I have lived not as I should have… But how so when I did everything in the proper way” (Tolstoy 1474)? Ilyich had been in a bubble for his entire life, the bubble only popping when he realizes his own mortality. This puts his marriage, his career, and his life choices into perspective. Realizing that he does not get to redo these choices, he distances himself from his old life: his wife, his children, and his career. All that is left is to reflect. This reflection is his personal enlightenment. He had been living in the dark, blind to his true feelings for his entire life. Mortality creates a space in which he can question himself as to why he made the choices he made, and how those choices created the unsatisfactory life he finds himself in
In the novel, My Antonia, by Willa Cather, society seems to govern the lives of many people. But for the others, who see past society's stereotypical values, had enough strength to overcome this and allowed them to achieve their dreams. Throughout the book, everyone seems to be trying to pursue the American Dream. While they all have different ideas of just exactly what the American Dream is, they all know precisely what they want. For some, the American Dream sounds so enticing that they have traveled across the world to achieve their goal.
In Frederick Nietzsche’s The Death of God, his madman cries, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?”(The Madman) To Nietzsche, the phrase "God is dead" is not to be take literally in the sense that he believed in an actual God who existed and then died. Rather, he is implying that the Christian God is no longer the go to for absolute moral principles. In a way, Nietzsche’s The Death of God is explaining that because people are starting to no longer believe in god, their morality isn't tied up in the idea of some imaginary being. It seems that Nietzsche's intended purpose was to do away with the traditional idea of “Christian” morality as he believed that because people were evolving to a place where they could create their own morality, God was unnecessary and irrelevant.
Memories are a stockpile of good and bad experiences that are retained of a people, places. How do you remember your childhood memories? Do certain people, places or things trigger these memories to the past? Does the knowledge of these experience still affect your life today? Throughout the novel My Antonia, Jim's nostalgia for the past is represented by nature, symbolic elements, and above all Antonia.
Leo Tolstoy, author of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, suffered numerous tragic losses such as his parents and his aunt, Tatyana Ergolsky who created a tremendous impact during Tolstoy’s childhood. Overtime, Tolstoy was cultured and for Tolstoy it was common within his community. During the 1840, Tolstoy developed a strong, eager interest for the studies of moral philosophy. In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy suggests that although people can find happiness in materialism, they need spirituality during a crisis.
Tolstoy immediately absorbs you into the novel by beginning with Ivan’s death. The actual death scene is saved until the end of the novel, but he shows you the reaction of some of Ivan’s colleagues as they hear the news of Ivan’s death. You are almost disgusted at the nonchalant manner that Ivan’s “friends” take his death. They are surprised by his death, but immediately think of how his death will affect their own lives, but more importantly, their careers. “The first though that occurred to each of the gentlemen in the office, learning of Ivan Ilyich’s death, was what effect it would have on their own transfers and promotions.” (pg 32) As a reader, you have to wonder how Ivan must have had to live in order for people close to him to feel no sadness towards the loss or even pity for his wife. In fact, these gentlemen are exactly like Ivan. The purpose of their lives was to gain as much power as possible with n...
identical. Both characters were in isolation prior to the initial plot of the books, but for
Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia in 1860 to a woman named Yevgeniya and a man named Pavel. His father, who shares the name of the bishop, is described as being “severe” and sometimes went as far as to chastise Chekhov and his siblings (Letters
The text is Pride and Prejudice which is about the ups and downs of the connection/relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. The person who changes the most throughout the novel is Mr. Darcy who changes for the affection of Elizabeth. The first copy of Pride and Prejudice was published in 1993 by Wordsworth Editions Limited. Jane Austen is the author and the genre of the novel is Historical/Romance. The book looks at Mr. Darcy and changing his personality, which characters remain static through the book, what Jane Austen is trying to say about the period of time the novel is set in and why Jane Austen has so many characters that stay the same all through the book.
other from Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy is a wealthy man who is a friend of Mr
...t is . What really accentuated the story's realness was the cold-harsh fact that no one is exempt from death. This was given when Gerasim said to Ivan that everyone dies (p135). As the last book Tolstoy made before his conversion to Christianity: this book, delving deep into death, could reveal some clues about what the bible is trying to tell us about the truth of death. Is death the end, the process, or...the beginning? Who knows? One thing for certain is that every individual goes through the grief process a bit differently, and Tolstoy has proven that through his main character, Ivan Illych.
a good mother and a good wife. The goal of women was to grow up to
Then novel War and Peace was written by a famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy in 1865. The novel describes the war with Napoleon in which many countries were involved such as Russia, Austrian, Prussia, Spain, Sweden, and Britain. The novel mainly focuses on Russia. It reflects the different views and participation in the war of Russian aristocracy and peasants and also shows Tolstoy’s negative viewpoint on the war.
During the Crimean War, Tolstoy commanded a battery, and was at the siege of Sebastopol . In 1857 he visited France, Switzerland, and Germany to learn more about society and how to improve it. After traveling for a time, Tolstoy settled in Yasnaja Polyana, where he started a school for poor children. He saw that the secret of changing the world was in education. He investigated during his travels to Europe educational theory and practice, and published magazines and textbooks on the subject. In 1862 he married Sonya Andreyevna Behrs, and they had 13 children. Sonya also acted as Tolstoy’s secretary.
Anna Karenina is a novel by the prominent Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It was published in serial installments between 1873 and 1877. Tolstoy himself claimed that Anna Karenina was his first novel. Despite criticism that the novel was indeed two separate novels, there was much acclaim. Fellow Russian author Dostoevsky hailed it as “a flawless work of art” (En8848.com.cn).