Judgment in Anna Karenina Essay -- Tolstoy Anna Karenina Essays

The question of judgment and sympathies in Anna Karenina is one that seems to become more multiform each time I read the novel. The basic problem with locating the voice of judgment is that throughout the novel, there are places where we feel less than well-provided with the seemingly straightforward, at times even didactic presentation of Anna and Vronskys fall into sin alongside Levins constant moral struggle. As Annas story unfolds in its occasional manner within the context of the rest of the novel, Tolstoy seems to be trying to make the fact of her guilt more and more clear to us at the alike time though, we have more and more difficulty 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 least complicate, the discernment of authorial judgment. By near examining To lstoys treatment of Annas moral crisis as compared with his handling of Levin, we might attempt to unravel the books rather layered and complex system of condemnation. The novels epigraph sets a certain tone for us before we even begin reading the biblically inflected Vengeance is mine I will repay, plants in our heads the idea that wrong will be do and punishment exacted. Indeed, we come across a wrong in the very first 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 lazy and mischievous(14), his life... ...he end, perhaps because Tolstoy was a better writer than he was true moralist, Im not sure that Tolstoy ever reconciled the novels judgment of Anna with his own sympathy and love for her. The result is a novel divided, uneasy with the vengeful ness of its own condemnation, perhaps proud of its over-riding communicate of living for truth and the good(817) in life, but ultimately unable to fully convince us that it gravitates toward its own confused 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 Modern Library, 1993. Turgenev, Ivan. Sketches From a Hunters Album, trans. Richard Freeborn London Penguin Books, 1990.