Book #45: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Dun dun dunnnn! The big one! I am so glad I FINALLY finished this book. I've always meant to read it but I've always been so intimidated by how huge it is (over 1100 pages), which makes it so difficult to even want to start it. But a few months ago, our book club decided to make this our summer book, which was a good enough motivation for me to start it--and once I was into it, I didn't want to give up! It's kind of hard to think of what to say to "review" War and Peace, since it's such a iconic work, but I'll start with this: I really enjoyed it and I'm very glad I read it.

The narrative of the novel is amazing and engrossing. It tells the story of five main families throughout the early decades of the 19th century in Russia, through Russia's wars with Napoleon and Napoleon's invasion of Russia. There are several main heroes and heroines who we follow specifically (part of those families), namely, Pierre, Andrey, Marya, and Natasha, and we follow them in their romances and disappointments and discoveries about the meaning of life. The intertwining of these people and these families was the true heart of the book and definitely my favorite part. I loved seeing how they all fell in love with people and how they were searching for meaning and goodness and truth in their own ways.

I think my favorite character in the novel was Princess Marya, a quiet and very religious young woman who was terrorized by her father her whole life but forgave him and basically only tried to be kind to everyone. But she was humanized for me too by how she didn't like some people, even though she tried to be Christlike and patient with everyone. Natasha, arguably the main heroine in the novel, kind of drove me crazy. Someone said that they'd read that Natasha was even more likeable than Lizzie Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, but she seemed very overly dramatic and selfish to me. She was a teenage girl for most of the novel, though, so it is maybe understandable. Pierre and Andrey, several of the main male protagonists, both tried throughout the novel to find meaning in their lives in a number of different meaning systems (Pierre becomes a Freemason for a while, Andrey tries to find glory in serving in the army, they both try to find it through women, etc.) but all of their attempts fail and when terrible things happen, they find that they can't find answer so the question of "Why did this happen?"

But I love by the end of the book how they both find similar, very simple answers. Pierre is captured as a prisoner of war in Moscow, and during his captivity finds his answer: "In old days he had sought Him in the aims he set before himself. That search for an object in life had only been a seeking after God; and all at once in his captivity he had come to know, not through words or arguments, but by his own immediate feeling, what his old nurse had told him long before; that God is here, and everywhere. . . . He felt like a man who finds what he has sought at his feet, when he has been straining his eyes to seek it in the distance. All his life he had been looking far way over the heads of all around him, while he need not have strained his eyes, but had only to look in front of him" (1005). Andrey is consumed by bitterness after a bad break-up with Natasha, but is wounded in the war and comes close to dying. While in the army hospital having his wound dealt with, he feels an amazing charity towards everyone, and realizes that that is the secret he had been searching his whole life: "Sympathy, love for our brothers, for those who love us, love for those who hate us, love for our enemies, yes the love that God preached upon earth, that Marie sought to teach me, and I did not understand, that it why I am sorry to part with life, that is what was left me if I had lived" (745). I love how they both find these simple, everyday answers to their questions about life and how they both went on this search for meaning to find that their answers could have been found in front of their eyes years before if they had been willing to see them.

I loved the ending of the book especially though, how people get married and have babies and are happy together and live together as one big happy family. I love that they all love their spouses and their children and each other. I love what Nikolay says to Marya, "It's not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome. . . . When you are away, and any misunderstanding like this comes between us, I feel as though I were lost and can do nothing. Why, do I love my finger? I don't love it, but try cutting it off. . . ." (1051). It makes me happy to know that even though their lives aren't perfect, that everything turns out generally well for them in the end.

It was fascinating to me to learn about the history of this time, because I only vaguely remember learning about Napoleon and Russia. I had had no idea that Moscow was destroyed during Napoleon's invasion and that it was almost completely burned to the ground. I really liked learning about the culture in Russia at the time and all of the events that were covered during the book.

The book can be hard to read, though. First of all, there are tons and tons of characters who Tolstoy will name once and then expect you to remember later, and all of their names sound the same, and all the characters have tons of nicknames that everyone refers to them by. Andrey is called Andryushka and Marya is called Marie and Marusha and Natasha is called Natalie and Natalia and all sorts of variations. But once you figure that out (after about 400 pages of it), that's not too bad. I also was kind of bored by all of the chapters that went so in depth about the war and the generals making decisions about what to do, and I ended up skimming a lot of that. The harder part is getting through all of Tolstoy's philosophical discussions about the true meaning of history and power and life and war, which he sprinkles throughout the book in solid chapters of philosophy. It's concentrated a lot near the end of the novel, especially in the last Epilogue. He is really arguing against the theory that individual people can make decisions that can impact the course of history, and claiming that events happen because of the momentum of events that are already happening and because of the will and power of all individuals together. It's a pretty interesting argument and I really liked some of the points he makes, but man, he goes on and on and on about it all over the place and by the end of the book I was saying, "I GET IT ALREADY!" I think reading an abridged version would have made it more enjoyable, because it would be easy to take out most of those chunks and just keep all of the narrative, which was what I loved anyway.

I'm thinking about reading Anna Karenina now, since I'm already in the Tolstoyan mood. We'll see if it actually happens. But I need a new project!