Leo Tolstoy's Distinctive Style of Narration - Research Paper Example

Leo Tolstoy's distinctive style of narration. Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is better known by his English Leo Tolstoy. He completed Anna Karenina in 1877. This is one of his two most famous novels about the Russian society. This essay examines how Tolstoy develops his style of narration in Anna Karenina. Tolstoy wrote in the third person omniscient narrator. In this mode, he is privileged to have the advantage of shifting his perspectives from one character to another. The novel starts with Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky's, (Stiva) domestic dispute with his wife, Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya, or Dolly for short. Stiva ponders aloud what he should do. The narrative combines his stream of consciousness and the third person perspective in the writing in Part One, Chapter One; ' "But what's to be done What's to be done" he said to himself in despair, and found no answer.' (Tolstoy 3). Tolstoy developed his omniscient narratives to depict different tones of voices while stepping in the shoes of the various characters. For example, the omniscient narrator who writes about Stiva uses a relaxed tone to reflect Stiva's personality. When the narrator writes about Levin, the tone is tense. It tells that Levin is awkward in social manners because he is honest. Levin and Stiva are assigned opposite tones in narratives because their characters are opposites. Levin's unhappiness with the political climate is depicted in this narrative with Levin and Stiva in Part One, Chapter Five, when this is recorded about Levin; ' "On one side it's a plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I'm neither young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the other side" (he stammered) "it's a means for the coterie of the district to make money. Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice, now they have the district council--not in the form of bribes, but in the form of unearned salary," he said, as hotly as though someone of those present had opposed his opinion.' Tolstoy used the characters to comment on one another to give the observer's perspective. In Part One, Chapter Eighteen, Tolstoy uses Vronsky's mother, Countess Vronskaya, to describe Anna. The narrative says; ' "She's very sweet, isn't she" said the countess of Madame Karenina. "Her husband put her with me, and I was delighted to have her..." ' Tolstoy uses the Countess to voice a different opinion of Anna towards the end of the novel. Tolstoy developed Anna's narrator to grow with her role in the novel. In the beginning, she is the successful negotiator who win's Dolly's hand back for he brother, Stiva. The narrator shows Anna's cunning strategy of sympathy, empathy, praise, and eventual victory. Tolstoy has developed the narrative to even use the pauses fruitfully. For example, in Part One, Chapter Nineteen, Anna says; ' "I don't know, I can't judge.... Yes, I can," said Anna, thinking a moment; and grasping the position in her thought and weighing it in her inner balance, she added: "Yes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I could forgive it. I could not be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and forgive it as though it had never been, never been at all..." ' Towards the end of the novel in Part Eight, Chapter Thirty-One, Anna has changed into a different woman. She is no longer complacent in her old realist views of her Russian society or European world. The narration portrays her as a true tragic heroine who gives up her marriage for love with Vronsky. Vronsky fails her. The narrative describes Anna as becoming confused. She reads meaning into everything she sees. At this stage, Tolstoy is trying to shift his novel, from the realist mode into the modernist. This departure from realism shows when Anna's thoughts leave the unimportant daily experiences and she tries to read deeper meanings into the ordinary activities. The novel introduces modernism then. In Part Eight, Chapter Thirty-One, the narration records Anna as saying; '"Yes, I'm very much worried, and that's what reason was given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the light when there's nothing more to look at, when it's sickening to look at it all But how Why did the conductor run along the footboard, why are they shrieking, those young men in that train why are they talking, why are they laughing It's all falsehood, all lying, all humbug, all cruelty!..." ' Tolstoy's style develops towards modernism. He makes Anna become an increasingly pessimistic woman. She contemplates death when she says; ' "...why not put out the light when there's nothing more to look at..." ' Anna becomes alienated and isolated after her failed love affair with Vronsky. Tolstoy has developed this novel into a modernist fiction with the common traits of alienation and dysfunction in Anna. Anna has lost her marital status, son and is disillusioned when her former friends desert her in the cruel urban society. Anna withers from her socialist realism and dies in the modernist society that is disintegrating in good core values. Tolstoy developed his novel along the modernist realm by displacing a clear protagonist. Instead, there are dual protagonists in the form of Anna and Levin. They serve as comparisons and contrasts. Levin blooms from being a realist, into a modernist. He is a modernist who understands the problems of his society. Tolstoy includes this conversation exchange between the two brothers, Levin and Sergey, to show the modernist trends of being concerned over the political and social developments of the country; ' "Do you know I've been thinking about you," said Sergey Ivanovitch. "It's beyond everything what's being done in the district, according to what this doctor tells me. He's a very intelligent fellow. And as I've told you before, I tell you again: it's not right for you not to go to the meetings, and altogether to keep out of the district business. If decent people won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong. We pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no schools, nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drugstores-- nothing." Levin reveals his earnest modernism when he affirms; ' "Well, I did try, you know," Levin said slowly and unwillingly. "I can't! and so there's no help for it." ' It is noted the persistent trends of modernism is repeated in the overlapping voices of the different characters. Levin is everything in contrast with Anna. He is the symbol of peace and goodness coming from the rural purity. Anna represents the decadence from the urban waste. The love lives of Levin and Anna are parallels that contrast. Tolstoy incorporated dual sets of love relationships to illustrate what happens with the different sets of couples. In Part One, Chapter Thirty-Three, Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin is introduced as a socially correct, important man who takes pride in doing everything right. Tolstoy develops his character to reveal chinks in the armor of hypocrisy and artificiality. He uses Anna to cast the initial doubt over Karenin. The narrative says; '"All the same he's a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable in his own line," Anna said to herself going back to her room, as though she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said that one could not love him. "But why is it his ears stick out so strangely Or has he had his hair cut" ' Anna has some suspicions that something is wrong with Karenin but she cannot quite put her finger on it. Karenin's character is developed in Princess Myakaya's criticism on him. She says in Part Two, Chapter Six; '"If our husbands didn't talk to us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexey Alexandrovitch (Karenin), to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper...but doesn't it really make everything clear Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, he a fool, though only in a whisper, everything's explained, isn't it" ' Tolstoy later develops the educated Karenin's character into a fool who believes in Countess Lydia Ivanovna's mystical and religious hypocrisy. The developed novel comes full circle when Countess Vronskaya summarizes Anna's behavior. She says in Part Eight, Chapter Four; ' "But my poor son was utterly given up to her. He had thrown up everything, his career, me, and even then she had no mercy on him, but of set purpose she made his ruin complete. No, say what you will, her very death was the death of a vile woman, of no religious feeling. God forgive me, but I can't help hating the memory of her, when I look at my son's misery!" ' It is fitting that Countess Vronskaya has offered this negative criticism on Anna at the train station since it was she who had praised Anna upon their first meeting, also at the railway station. Tolstoy has developed his narrative very well by having the same character voice a complete change in opinion as regards to Anna. Tolstoy has summed up his narrative by writing in closures for Anna, Karenin and Vronsky. The doubting Anna commits suicide, the hypocrite Karenin survives and the restless Vronsky continues his active military service by fighting a new war in Serbia. He is a master in his unique style of fiction that combines realism and modernism. The end. Works Cited. Project Gutenberg. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. 2005. Project Gutenberg. 24 Apr. 2007. < http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1399/1399-8.txt >. Read More