Anna Karenina By Leo Tolstoy

(1828 – 1910) Essay, Research Paper

Leo Tolstoy is considered one of Russia’s

greatest nineteenth-century novelists, an honor he shares with Dostoievsky.

Tolstoy, however, focuses his novels on the vicissitudes of the upper-classes

rather than on Dostoievsky’s underprivileged peasants or criminals.

Tolstoy foresaw the end of the aristocracy

in Russian society. Serfs had already been set free; the working class

was beginning to expand in power. Moreover, new mores and morals were being

imported from the West, and society’s upper crust was the first to feel

the strain of these changes – a strain running an undercurrent throughout

Anna Karenina.

The novel reads like a soap opera, with

the exhaustive cast of characters continually creating their own problems.

Contrast Anna’s tragic quest for love and personal fulfillment with the

spiritual odyssey of Levin. Through hard work and the support of an understanding

family, his search is rewarded by happiness. Thus, Tolstoy’s gripping masterpiece

revolves around the dissimilar paths of these two characters, allowing

a forum for the author’s commentary on Russia’s maze-like social system,

fraught with unresolved incongruities.