Progress Report Number 4
January 9, 1999
After a while, Anna and Vronsky became bored in Vozdvizhensk, and they moved to Moscow. It was there that Anna’s mental state started really slipping out of her control. It took the form of jealousy. She suspected Vronsky of meeting other women every time he left the house. She couldn’t bear his being away for even a moment. Yet, he felt he had to continue to live in society even if she was shunned by it for now. He was trying, with her, to secure the divorce so they could marry and Anna could once more be restored to society, but Anna was not altogether convinced that that was a good thing. She saw it as the final end of her ever getting to see her son again. Her suspicions went completely off the scale, and she constantly accused Vronsky of one thing or another, and made their moments together a real hell. He tried to assure her of his complete love and devotion, but she never could be satisfied for very long. Ultimately, she killed herself.
The part of the book that deals with her final day and the suicidal act itself is extremely fine writing. It is somewhat reminiscent of Dostoevsky in its psychological aspect as well as the way it employs an almost palpaple evil entity directing her ruin (her "light" that lets her see things clearly in a negative way). A whole day is described almost like "stream of consciousness," but in complete sentences. I’ll leave that to you to enjoy first hand.
There is almost no story left after Anna does herself in. Vronsky is out of his mind with grief. He is off to captain a squadron of Volunteers, at his own expense, in an undeclared war in Serbia against the Turks who are oppressing the local population. He wants to die, and tells Koznyshov that if his death can have a meaning, then his life will have had one. Karenin is only slightly mentioned; he took Anna and Vronsky's daughter to care for. He went to the funeral. Vronsky's mother said that it was easier on Karenin; he'd been set free.
The final part of the book concerns Levin, and how he comes to believe in God. He identifies the idea of "goodness" in human activity as that which people have done for all time to mutually share their common idea of God and to rejoice in His goodness, acknowledging their dependence on His goodness and striving to show thankfulness by returning it as much as they are able. This answer to the meaning of life is the end of a long mental struggle for Levin, and it's so simple that he can't understand why he was running away from acknowledging it all along.
This final part reminded me of the end of War and Peace, where Tolstoy gave this long, complicated treatise on governments and their right to declare war. The ending to Anna Karenina is much easier to read and understand, but it also seemed to lack sufficient relevance to the part of the story that I enjoyed most. It seemed almost like Tolstoy felt he had earned his soapbox, and now he’s going to preach the moral of the story. Not that I disagree with what he has to say or his well-deserved right to say it. I do agree with it, in fact. It just seemed odd to me as the best way to end the book. Maybe he wanted to make the point about Anna’s tragedy being caused by immorality by contrasting her end with the beauty of Levin and Kitty’s upright lives with their new baby, all happy in the end. Certainly, some happy note was needed on which to end the book after the nerve-stretching description of Anna’s last day.
I hope you will read the book yourself. I would especially like to hear others' thoughts on this book. I’ve not really been able to find any easily-accessible, detailed commentary on it. It isn’t in Cliff's Notes, and it is not usually assigned reading in schools. It is a beautiful panorama of an age in Russia, though, and I’ll always treasure the memory of that description.
Copyright 1999, Herman Fontenot
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