Dear Anna

Title: Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Publisher: Harper & Brothers
Originally Published: 1877
This Edition: 1959
Rating: A

I couldn’t do justice here dissecting Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. All I can do is make observations while the weight of this masterpiece is still heavy on my mind.

Reading Anna Karenina was like reading the saga of Jon and Marlena but in a sea of Russian names. Nestled between the social happenings and drama of the noble class Tolstoy depicts are glimpses of 19^th century life. He touches on labor issues, materialism, religion and education – all issues of prime concern during this time in Russian history.

One of my favorite aspects of Tolstoy’s writing is his way of explaining his characters’ points of view. There were no characters in this book I particularly liked. But Tolstoy gave them complexities the reader can see by being inside their thoughts and feelings. After reading Anna Karenina, I can also understand why he was a favorite among Beat writers. His passages could have easily influenced the stream of consciousness techniques used by writers like Kerouac and Burroughs.

Ultimately, it was the development of his two main characters – Anna and Levin – that made me fall in love with this classic.

Both were very passionate, consumed by the love they felt for their partners. Both were plagued by jealousy in their relationships. Levin and Anna both contemplated suicide; only Anna was successful. Anna’s motives for ending her life were desperation and spite. Levin couldn’t understand what there was in life to live for. Anna was obsessed with her unfortunate position. Levin was obsessed with the question of existence. But their paths veered. Anna eventually killed herself while Levin lived, finding eventual peace in faith. Levin realized in the end that life’s meaning was what he put into it. It was completely up to him. The tragedy was that Anna never gave herself the chance to reach the same conclusion.