Anna Karenina All Happy Families

Tolstoy infamously starts the novel Anna Karenina with the line, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," setting up the novel every bit a case written report of happy and unhappy families.

Although the novel is mainly about unhappy families, Tolstoy makes the story of the 1 happy family, Ekaterina Scherbatsky (Kitty) and Konstantin Levin (Kostya), but as interesting every bit the others. Although every other human relationship seems to tear apart its members, Kitty and Kostya stand up out because their love makes them stronger. Nikolai Levin, Kostya's brother, has the primary importance of illustrating how their relationship allows them to cope with bug that they cannot deal with on their own. We see the very qualities that brand them unable to handle his illness by themselves turned into virtues when they are together. By using the life and expiry of Nikolai Levin as a way to highlight the differences in Kitty and Konstantin Levin before and afterwards their marriage, Tolstoy emphasizes the transformative power of love, revealing love'due south power to balance out our weaknesses and brand usa whole.

Tolstoy emphasizes the transformative power of honey, revealing love's ability to rest out our weaknesses and make us whole.

Tolstoy immediately sets up the connection between Kitty and Konstantin's human relationship and Nikolai. The first time the reader meets Nikolai is right later Konstantin's commencement proposal has been rejected by Kitty, leading Konstantin to question his self worth and the purpose of the world:

I myself am to blame. What right did I have to think she would want to join her life with mine? Who am I? And what am I? A worthless human, of no utilize to anyone or for anything.' And he remembered his brother Nikolai and paused joyfully at this remembrance. 'Isn't he correct that everything in the world is bad and vile?' [84]

Kostya is self-deprecating to the point of being pathetic. In most, humility and accepting blame are virtues, but Kostya takes information technology to the extreme and wants to just give up on the world when things go wrong, shaming himself into feeling "worthless." By connecting Kostya'southward self-loathing with his blood brother's pessimistic attitude on the world, Nikolai is set up every bit an antithesis to Kostya's normally upbeat attitude. Tolstoy introduces Nikolai as someone who makes Kostya confront his innermost feelings, with Kostya describing his brother every bit someone, "Who understood him thoroughly, who would call up all his innermost thoughts, would make him speak his whole mind. And that he did not want" (346). Kostya's deep introspection makes him a very kind and cognitive character; only, in bad times, it leads him to an obsessive state every bit he acknowledges in this statement past saying that he does non desire to think and then securely.

Painting of Anna Karenina by Hana Popaja

Non just does Nikolai phone call attention to Kostya'due south cocky-deprecation, simply also his extreme illness makes Kostya reflect upon decease, leading him to question the purpose of life in full general: "Death, the inevitable end of everything, presented itself to him for the first time with irresistible strength" (348). As a deeply intellectual and introspective character, Kostya gets defenseless up when the question of expiry is presented before him past Nikolai's disease, leading him into an all-consuming state of nihilism.

Tolstoy's choice of the give-and-take "irresistible" points out how Kostya is enchanted by thoughts like this and cannot assist merely take them, even though they drive him to madness:

He had actually forgotten, overlooked in his life 1 small circumstance – that death would come and everything would end, that it was non worth stating anything and that nada could peradventure be done virtually information technology. Yeah, information technology was terrible, but it was so. [348]

Past saying that Kostya had forgotten well-nigh the possibility of expiry, Tolstoy emphasizes how deeply Nikolai'due south illness affects Kostya. Nikolai's illness forces Kostya to try and confront the large question of life and death, but Kostya is unable to handle it, instead choosing to retreat into a state of utter despair: "He saw either death or the approach of it everywhere. Just this undertaking now occupied him all the more. He had to alive his life to the stop, until expiry came. Darkness covered everything for him" (352).

Kostya's nihilism changes him from a methodical man who feels deeply to a stone-cold cynic. All of the flaws of Kostya that Nikolai's illness brings out (his obsessive over-thinking, his complete blame of himself) are also his all-time qualities (his deep intellectualism, his ability to have responsibility for his actions).Continued on Next Page »