Summary Of The Forged Coupon, By Leo Tolstoy

Actions and motives are wide reaching in terms of who they effect and the extent of their effectiveness. One may suppose that a small lie has little impact on those around him or her. Leo Tolstoy, as evidenced in his story, The Forged Coupon, argues against this assumption in regards to the role individual actions play in the creation of communal history. Throughout the fictional text, Tolstoy utilizes powerful visual diction to portray plausible public implications for small private acts. Tolstoy moves from a simple writing of history that turns past events into human documentation by expounding on social and cultural factors that influence causation and its role in future history. In order to achieve this goal, Tolstoy makes clear his debatable

Instead of mirroring their lives based on the life of Christ, the clergy mirrored their lives based on the lives of the Pharisees and focused on works and made it difficult for the non-clergy to encounter Christ. Men were prosecuted for attempting to pursue Christ more fully when it opposed the outward-exemplifying works-oriented gospel that the clergy of the day was promoting. Religious piety was used as a form of political power to keep the citizens content in following the laws of the government. Unfortunately, the clergy themselves failed to denounce this adulterated piety. They were content to accept this lackluster religion as truth and denounce any citizens who opposed them. The idea of hypocrisy in the clergy can clearly be seen in the interaction between Father Michael Vedensky and Mitia Smokovnikov’s father, Fedor Mihailovich and the ensuing explanation given by

Tolstoy condemns this corrupt relationship by showing the immorality of how the wealthy take advantage of the peasants and how—in reciprocation—the peasants steal from the wealthy. This can be seen early in the story when Eugene Mihailovich exploits Vassily—with persuasion in the form of a bribe—to promote his distorted lie. Tolstoy then ties his beliefs with that of Vassily in explaining Vassily’s new worldview in this brief excerpt. Previous to the incident of the forged coupon, Vassily could not actually believe that rich people lived without any moral law. But after that, still more after having perjured himself, and not being the worse for it in spite of his fears—on the contrary, he had gained ten roubles out of it Vassily became firmly convinced that no moral laws whatever exist, and that the only thing to do is to pursue one's own interests and pleasures. This he now made his rule in life (Tolstoy Part First, sec VIII).

Later in the story, Tolstoy shows how this small act of perjury corrupts Vassily and changes him. This interaction producing more corruption is the manner in which Tolstoy believes his culture and society