Judgment in Anna Karenina Essay -- Tolstoy Anna Karenina Essays

The inquire of judgment and sympathies in Anna Karenina is one that seems to become more complicated each(prenominal) time I read the novel. The basic problem with locating the articulatio of judgment is that throughout the novel, there are places where we feel less than favorable with the seemingly straightforward, at times level didactic presentation of Anna and Vronskys come into sin alongside Levins constant moral struggle. As Annas story unfolds in its episodic manner within the con school text of the rest of the novel, Tolstoy seems to be difficult to make the fact of her guilt more and more clear to us at the same time though, we have more and more hassle in tracing out the specific locus of that guilt. In a novel as consummately constructed as this one is, we are tempted to look for places where the undercurrents of the text, the places where the text takes on its own life and force, run against, or at to the lowest degree complicate, the discernment of a uthorial judgment. By closely examining Tolstoys treatment of Annas moral crisis as compared with his handling of Levin, we might attempt to unravel the books rather layered and involved system of condemnation. The novels epigraph sets a certain tone for us before we even begin reading the biblically inflected Vengeance is mine I ordain repay, plants in our heads the idea that wrong will be done and penalisation exacted. Indeed, we come across a wrong in the very commencement ceremony lines of the opening chapter, in Stepan Arkadyichs dalliance with the French governess, which has thrown the Oblonsky house into confusion.(1) Tolstoys descriptions of Stepan Arkadyich as a pleasant, honest, well-liked bon vivant seem at times to drip with contempt. He is superfluous and mischievous(14), his life... ...he end, maybe because Tolstoy was a better writer than he was straight moralist, Im not sure that Tolstoy ever reconciled the novels judgment of Anna with his own g enerosity and love for her. The result is a novel divided, uneasy with the vengefulness of its own condemnation, perhaps proud of its over-riding message of living for truth and the good(817) in life, exactly ultimately unable to fully convince us that it gravitates toward its own missed and forced moral center. Works Cited and Consulted Cherneshevsky, Nikolai. The Anthropological Principle in philosophy in Edie, Scanlan and Zeldin, eds., Russian Philosophy Chicago Quadrangle Books, 1965. Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina, trans. Constance Garnett New York The juvenile Library, 1993. Turgenev, Ivan. Sketches From a Hunters Album, trans. Richard Freeborn London Penguin Books, 1990.