Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Part 1, Part 2, + Part 3 - Book Summary, Analysis, Review

And welcome to the Codex Cantina where we are covering parts one through three of the infamous Anna Karenina today. I am Crypto, what do you call me? Alayusha? If you are here before watching the before you read Anna K video, we recommend you head over there as that is something that where we framed up a lot of the context. Today we are just looking at parts one through three. Now Crypto and I have never read this book before. So what we're doing is kind of filming them in batches and then we'll get to the before you read afterwards to kind of set the context of what are the things that we wish we knew before starting this book. We're going to make some predictions and claims and thoughts about this, but we don't have the complete story yet because we are recording these as we go through reading it. And so we may have to come back and retroactively fix things. Hey, we said this in our other video, but we kind of think this now as these characters evolve and we get to know Anna and the cast of more as we move through this novel. Now, another pain point that we always hear is that when we read these classic books, you might look up a character because there might be a lot of characters and then you get spoiled in terms of like the first paragraph says what happens to them at the end of the book. I don't know why people organize data that way. We'll put a section here for a character map where we quickly discuss what are the characters that were kind of introduced major characters that played a role, at least in this parts of the book. And down below you'll find some chapter links where you can skip ahead to the chapter recap. And then also you'll have a discussion for each one. So we'll do a recap of what happened in chapter one and then do a quick discussion on it. Quick recap of what happened in two quick discussion on that. And then we'll move through the whole book in this manner. If that sounds like you guys of looking for someone to kind of have a conversation, you love this book or thought it was interesting or weren't sure on something, I kind of want to hear other people's thoughts. We thought this would be a great avenue to offer for you guys to kind of join along with us. When you're reading a Tolstoy short story or novel, it's always important to remember, at least it helps me to remember, that Tolstoy is kind of putting these characters in front of you like a mirror, but they're all a little out of focus and they're fuzzy. And as you move through the story, chapter after chapter, it just becomes a little bit more in focus. You get to see really who these people are as they evolve through one scenario to the next. So keep that in mind. And I think that will help you enjoy this huge myriad of cast of characters. Character map. So let's start at the beginning. First, we meet Stepan Oblonsky and his wife, Dolly. We're thrust into their infidelity. So let's talk about these families. For the Oblonskys, Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky. For some reason, I keep trying to say Shtepan because I knew a German man by that individual. Forgive me for my pronunciation issues. Stepan, or Stiva, is a pleasure-seeking aristocrat who just so happens to be brothers with the titular Anna in the story. He's the guy that eschews his duty and does what he wants at times, which may not be what we expect a character to do from a reader's perspective. Now his wife, Dolly, Daria Alexandrovna Oblonsky, she's the character that is holding her family together after her husband has committed adultery in the opening chapter. She's extremely sympathetic and kind, and she faces the realities of life and how harsh it can be at times. So why did Mr. Tolstoy start here? Well, I'm not sure. Maybe it's in his notes, or scholars can point it out. But I like to think of it as the union of the two families in this story. A hub from which, basically the five degrees of Kevin Bacon, we can reach every character in the story. So let's start with Dolly's family, and then we'll come back to the other leg of the Oblonskys. So the Scherbatsky sisters. Prince and Princess Scherbatsky have a fun family. They have three main daughters to talk about. And reminder, we're only talking about mostly the main characters up to this point in time. It's not a complete family tree, so I won't go into detail on their brother that died during the war, unless he comes up in later chapters, in which case we'll redraw the character map then. So Dolly, the one that we've talked about so far, is the oldest. Next up we have Natalia. Natalia Alexandrovna Lvova. I'm not really sure how to pronounce a lot of these names. Again, pronunciation mistakes on my part. In the middle, well, we know the least about her. Maybe it's middle child syndrome? Other than that she's married to a diplomat, we don't know too much. But Kitty, or Katarina Alexandrovna Scherbatskaya, she's the youngest, 18 years old, and finds herself in the center searching for love between two possible options, and perhaps a bit naive in the grand scheme of the battle arena of love. So what makes Kitty important to the story? Well, what it is is her two potential lovers from her perspective, which are Levin and Vronsky. When it comes to Levin, Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin, most frequently just referred to as Levin, is also one of the main characters, and possibly what the book could have been named after. Levin the farmer? Levin the unique? Who knows. While there are a lot of autobiographical takes on him, he's a fictional character and not just Tolstoy himself. He's a farmer, and he works hard, and he grew up with the Scherbatskys. He could have ended up with any one of them, but knows that Kitty was his true love when he saw her as an adult for the first time. Now the person competing for Kitty's attention is Vronsky, the romantic who follows his emotions, he's wealthy, handsome, a military man, and although he teases himself as a love interest to Kitty with no real risk to himself, it's really his instantaneous passion to Anna Karenina that drives the main thrust of the story. So jumping over to the Karenins, we have of course Anna Karenina, the main character and who's way too complex to really describe in a couple sentences. We'll dive most into her head and the compassionate and the caring situations she's thrown into, even with the very emotionally drawn charge that Vronsky brings to her life. But on the other side of Vronsky, for Anna Karenina, is her husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin. He's a high-ranking government official, and we'll learn more about Vronsky and him as a foil in a sense as we go through our discussion here, but he cares more about his career and public life than his private passion, the way that Anna perhaps feels starved. And they have their son, who's rather neglected at this point in the story, but I'm sure we'll learn more about him as the story goes on. So what is not obvious at first is that Anna is Stepan's brother, which brings us first circle. But jumping back real quick to the Levins, we had two other brothers to talk about that have made brief appearances but seem somewhat important, and that's Nikolai Dmitrovich Levin. He's an alcoholic, has poor health, and lives with a reformed prostitute Masha. He's super liberal and social, but brings the political talk to the table. And him and Levin may have a stronger bond. And the other brother is a half-brother, Sergey Ivanovich Korsunyshev. He's a famous writer and heavily intellectual, maybe even the opposite of Levin in some regards. He tends to be more wrapped up in thought than actual life. So now we see the big family. The Oblonsky family combines the stories. The drama starts with the Oblonsky family introduced to the Scherbatsky sisters, who introduce us to the long-term friend, the Levins, and inadvertently, with the love interest of Vronsky, who's more interested in Anna, who is pulled between Mr. Karenin and Vronsky. And as we said, Anna brings us back to the Oblonsky family, where Anna and Stepan, see I did it again, where Anna and Stepan are brother and sister. Let's move on to the plot summary and really start picking apart these relationships and what they mean. So moving into plot recap for chapter one, link down below if you'd like to jump ahead to the discussion. But I think I think we should recap here, because even if you've read this a long time ago, it's worth remembering what's in scope for this part of the discussion. We start off in Moscow and start out with Prince Stepan Oblonsky, a.k.a. Steva, has cheated on his wife. Infidelity in the aristocracy! Oh no, that never happened, right? His wife, Dolly, doesn't know if they can reconcile, while Stepan just kind of goes about his day, besides just sleeping on the couch at least. Now while their relationship is in shambles, he looks for his sister Anna Karenina, arriving soon to smooth things over. Stepan Oblonsky soon runs into his friend, country friend, Konstantin Levin, who will be referred to as Levin most of the time. As it turns out, Levin has the hots for his sister-in-law, Kitty Shcherbatskaya. Now Stepan tells him about his rival for Kitty's Though Levin has known the Shcherbatskaya family his entire life, Kitty and her mother seem rather cold to him, pun intended, at the ice rink. Now later at the Shcherbatskaya's house, Kitty thinks Vronsky will propose to her. So when Levin arrives first and proposes, she shuts him down. Poor country bumpkin Levin, I would say. But you know, Vronsky's the strapping young prince with all those opportunities. But we've got a split house, right? Mom's rooting for Vronsky, and dad is rooting for Levin. Typical. Now later, Vronsky heads to the train station to pick up his mother. He finds Stepan waiting for his sister, Anna, there. Upon arriving, it turns out that the whole train ride Vronsky's mother and Anna sat by each other, and Vronsky's mother spent the whole time talking up her son. Vronsky is attracted to Anna's energy as soon as she emerges. And mood killer, railroad employees run over by a train. That'd kill anybody. But to appease Anna, Vronsky offers money to the guard's wife. Now that Anna has arrived, she sets everything straight. Dolly and Stepan reconcile, and Kitty is soothed, at least for now, because soon there's a ball, and Kitty dances all the dances with hubba hubba Vronsky, while Anna snubs the big V. Until the last and most important dance, the mazurka, when Anna dances with Vronsky. Kitty realizes that Vronsky was never going to marry her, and that Anna has technically won. Anna returns back to Petersburg, and I don't think I've mentioned in this plot recap, Anna's married and has a kid. Oh, that's important. We haven't mentioned that yet. Maybe I should mention that part. Anna returns back to Petersburg, and Vronsky follows, inserting himself into the Karenin's third wheel. And Levin, old baby, returns to country life. Get ready for some farming. I feel like when you get t-shirts made, and I want Team Levin, like this poor guy, man. He's trying to do everything right, and he gets snubbed by the aristocrats. Dude, I could see Anna shirts would sell well. Vronsky shirts would probably sell better than you think. And then there's the Alexei Karenin shirts, and he's like, I'll throw in a free coffee. Like, please, doesn't somebody want my shirt? They're two for one. All right, so the opening line's pretty famous. I have heard this opening line, and I love it. I love it now more, seeing the context in which Anna Karenina's written, too. We have, happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. And this really thrusts us into the lies, right? Because we start out with infidelity immediately, with Oblonsky and Dolly. And along comes Anna, who's married, and we see that she's attracted to Vronsky. And I think we see a little bit of, like, foil characters, because you've got, like, you know, like, I think the good-hearted Levin, he's got a couple of rough patches, I think, in these first few chapters. But I have this feeling he's going to go on a journey and get better. But him and Anna are kind of like the ones that, they have very relatable characters, I would say. But each is maybe being challenged differently morally. I think that's one thing why this story is so timeless, is it is so relatable. We can all think of that of, like, yeah, kind of, you know, all happy families seem to have that one it thing. I can't put my finger on it, but it's what I want. And unhappy families all seem to always have their own chaos and drama and problems and never seems to just be one single thing. And we've seen that unfold in all these different families. And you can kind of pinpoint who you think is happy and who you think is not unhappy. And then Tolstoy does some really interesting storytelling and character development that twists a few things on its head, at least for me, as we went through parts one, two, and three. Mr. Tolstoy, you have delivered on the opening line with showing us how unhappy all these families can be, that's for sure. But I think what this does, is it presents to us, maybe how there's many different types of love. Maybe we can use the word love, and it can mean different things to different people. Isn't that the million dollar question? What is love? Four letters so powerful. But does love have to come from marriage? Does love have to be between just two people? We got the third wheel going on here. What is love? I think when we look at it character by character, right? So we'll start with Stepan here, Stiva. And he's just a socialite, right? Like he's the one that is looking for more attention from many people. And maybe we see even a little bit of that at the ball with Kitty, too, where the eyeballs or attraction of many isn't as valuable, perhaps, as the eyes of one, Bronski, the one that she actually wanted all along. And Stiva is arguably in that same situation where he is pursuing perhaps too many people's affection rather than just focusing on one. Yeah, I would describe him as the guy at the party that everybody is going to be paying attention to. And he craves that tension all the time. And that's what he loves, is that boosting up his own ego. I think he's a self-loving person, is how I would describe him. Well, for sure, he doesn't get it from his marriage, right? For him, love doesn't come from his marriage. But to his wife, Dolly, I think she has the familial love, right? It's her dedication to her kids, to holding everyone together, that really drives her. And I think it is very difficult for her, particularly when you look at marriage laws in Russia at the time. I think we'll go more into that in our before video, but it's worth pointing out for people who are starting on this video that it wasn't the same as it is now. Like you can't look at these relationships the same way that you do look at modern relationships. Now, in some ways, Russia was behind in terms of gender equality. In terms of divorces, I don't want to say it's ahead, but it's different from Europe, I should say, because fault matters. And since Dolly's not at fault, she could potentially gain more and keep more of the kids and the estate and stuff like that in a divorce than if you were at fault. But up to this point in the story, she hasn't made that decision, right? She's sacrificing her own, quote, love for the betterment of her family, even though in 19th century Russian laws, as far as we're concerned, she has a good claim to get a legal divorce, have control of the household, probably get control of the finances, and have the children. And she sacrifices that opportunity of her own happiness, perhaps, in a loveless marriage because she knows the betterment of her family comes first. That's true love in that sense, I think, for her. And I love how Tolstoy has written her. She's an amazing character. Now, one thing that I can't... It just really bugs me in movies when they have the love at first sight trope. There's times I'm okay with it, right? But maybe Vronsky's a little bit... Do you not believe in true love, Una? It's just... It bugs me in movies for some reason. But what I like about Levin's character is he's the opposite. He's Mr. Slowburn, right? He grew up with the Shcherbatskys. He knew all of them, got to know all three sisters at one point in his life. Maybe could have ended up with any of them. But he's the grown-up best friend love, in a sense, when it comes to Kitty. And I can already tell by the chat for the people that are in our Discord and talking about this book and sharing their thoughts along the way, a lot of us are rooting for Levin. A lot of us think that that long-term love, the love that comes from knowing someone for a long time, is something that we can root for. And plus, he's one of those guys that seems to have it together moralistically, if not having a few bumps around the edges sometimes. Yeah. And although maybe not love at first sight, and the Romeo and Juliet... Well, no, that's a terrible example. The Cinderella story, so to speak, for Levin. I do think that Levin is somebody that is characterized by consistent love, where he's not somebody that's just going to jump in there headfirst. He's written as an individual, in my interpretation, is that he knows himself, and that perhaps he'll evolve over time to figure out what he wants. And then if somebody else can reciprocate that love, then he'll be willing to go for it and take the chance. But he is kind of a little bit reserved, even though more infatuated than love at first sight, I would say. He is definitely growing on me, and I know that many of us are rooting for him. I hope that he gets his happily ever after, but this is 19th century Russia, not counting on it. Now, his object of affection, Kitty, she's interesting because she's actually got the two in the bush is better than one in the hand, right? She turned down Mr. Levin with the hoax of Bronski, and she's very quickly learning that never had intention of actually being serious with her. But I think this is worth pointing out, too, with how Tolstoy is exploring these characters. When you first get information, you take it as omniscient sometimes. And it is an omniscient narrator where he just floats around to people, to dogs. It's rather interesting how he kind of floats around. But what's interesting, too, is that you take it as truth. And then it's like a couple chapters later when we learn about Oblonski, and Oblonski never had intention of being with Kitty, per se. We're like, oh, I got to reevaluate how I feel about this character. And I feel like that's something that I'm just constantly going through this whole novel, is you talked about that pane of glass being removed. And it maybe gets a little bit clearer when you remove one pane of glass, and then you remove another one. And we get to know more about these characters each time they hit these obstacles, and each time we see them come out more and more as themselves, we start to learn a little bit more and more about their truth, and the truth about humanity, and what we want out of love, how we all view love differently, perhaps. With Kitty and Vronsky, I feel like they're almost the same coin, the different sides, or maybe just the male and female version of the same person that does want love, but they want a selfish love with just one other individual, perhaps, I guess is how maybe I would think of it. Those two are very complicated characters, and I'm very interested to see how they progress and grow throughout, because they're kind of selfish in their love, which is not necessarily a bad thing, even though when we get into Vronsky part two, I kind of changed my tone a little bit on him, but we'll get there. Yeah, I mean, it's safe to say, at least for right now, Vronsky's the aspie looking out for pleasure for himself, and not thinking about others, but what he wants. And maybe to a little bit his foil that we'll see more in the next chapter, we've read one through three at this point, everyone, is Mr. Karenin is one of duty, and also thinks about himself, and potentially not really caring about for others. It's kind of how these two foils play out, but maybe are a little bit different in the choices that they make. Man, this guy is like gray to the max. If there is a bland that could be blander, like the blandest, this guy's picture would be under the definition of bland. He just has no pizzazz. His definition of love is almost non-existent. Two for one shirt sale, right? Yeah, yeah, he's the two for one shirt sale guy. And then we have Anna, who has a beautiful introduction on that train, the way that she came out, and the way that you see that inner fire. She's not just pretty. She's attractive for her energy, her fire. And that's one of the ways I argue that Tolstoy does a good job of writing Anna, is we care about her as a character. She's compassionate. I was about to say the word loyal. That would be a really big mistake. She's compassionate, and she's caring. But at the same time, she's not necessarily moralistic. And I think we can feel for her with what's going to be kind of what seems like her downfall is how this book's probably going to be written. A couple of things about Anna I thought about is the start of her story. And I'm not sure where this is going yet. So again, forgive me if I'm wrong if you've read the entirety of the novel. But trains seem to be a big thing for Tolstoy in this story. And I'm not sure why exactly yet. Historically, either he loves or hates trains. But we're introduced to Anna through the train. And it seems to be showing this progression of time or the time's evolution. And maybe it's the vehicle, literally, no pun intended, of love and how this story is progressing forward. I'm not sure exactly yet. But the other thing about Anna besides her being on a train and Tolstoy's fascination with trains is, I think it's in her eyes. And he always brings that up, at least through parts one, two, and three so far of how all of these characters are just fascinated when they look in Anna that she is almost seeing into your soul. She's seeing through you. She knows who you are as a person. And I think that allows her to encapsulate more of maybe a lot of our own ideas of what love is, is that we can love other people as much as we love ourselves. Because Anna is a little bit selfish because she's going to make that choice to step outside of her marriage. Yeah, I agree. She's got a little bit of everything. And that's what makes Anna such an engaging character to follow to try to track her thoughts and all the different poles that she sees. Because, I mean, she was there to save her brother's marriage. And her marriage is what's now being put into the potboiler. So it's such an interesting combination put onto this book. It's no wonder that people love this book. It's rather complex. But at the same time, the structure is simple, where you have a foil for every character where you can add and remove morality, you can add and remove what their type of love is. It's almost like Tolstoy had this board up of just like, okay, this is going to be the one with familial love, but this is going to be their objection. Now the opposite to that is going to be this character who's connected to this. It's woven together masterfully. And in that weaving, you also have to think of how love affects love. Because Anna comes to her brother's aid and sees the failure of this marriage. And that affects her view of love as she's interpreting that and evolving as a person. Our perspective changes when we see things happen to family and friends. And then she reflects upon that and looks at her own life, looks inward, looks at her husband, and then says, wow, I'm in the same loveless marriage as my brother and his wife. Maybe I can have something better too, because obviously there is better out there. Well, I want to talk about one more thing about part one, and that's the professor that came through, which I think is important for us as we talk about emotions and we move through this. Because again, 19th century, very different how we look at things philosophically and in terms of knowledge than how we look at it in terms of today. So you kind of have to decide, how are you going to break this conversation down? But they're talking about a materialist. And materialists, people might think about the people who want things. That's not what we're talking about here. In terms of scientific materialism, in terms of the world, the idea is with materialism, there's nothing else. Your body is nothing but electrical signals and things of physicality. The sun, the light coming at us is UV rays. Everything within us is described through a physical phenomenon, which means under a realistic scientific materialism view, there's no God, there's no soul. We're just a reaction to output or outward stimuli, which is what kind of upsets one of the Levin brothers here. In the opposite view of this, I've heard a couple of different things in terms of dualism and stuff like that. But that's where you believe that there is a physical world, but you could also view there being a metaphysical world. And these two are kind of having that discussion of what comes first. And they're appalled by the idea of you being nothing but a response, a stimulus to the outside world, versus the other one thinks there's like this soul, and maybe there's something that is driving us and a design behind us and everything too. I think that's a rather important conversation, not just because it was a hot topic, and maybe Tolstoy was just throwing that in, but we can take that and say, okay, where do we think emotions come from? Because some of these characters, Tolstoy is pulling back on words. He's giving us output and actions. And maybe characters like Anna, we get a bigger view into. But sometimes like Mr. Karenin and Bronski, we don't get a huge look into their personal and mental thinking. And I think we can apply that conversation too here with where are these emotions coming from? Are they just reactions and stimulus to the outside world? Or is there something internal to us that maybe is driving us in how we make these decisions? Isn't that so Tolstoy though, right? I mean, you have one of the greatest love stories ever written, and I'm only a third away through the book. And I know that this is amazing. And he's able to sneak in philosophy and religion. And obviously, there's a little bit of play in here of communism and capitalism. And there's a little bit of play on classes, class divide, you know, economic issues, man and women's issues on morality and love. It's just, wow, there's a lot crammed in here. And then to pack in, how does one define one's own emotions? And how is that going to dictate the choices that you're going to make in life? We can steer this boat any way you want, right? Like you could literally jump from this to your point to the idea of communism too. Because if you remember, communism wasn't enacted by natural order, per se. It was philosophy first. The essence and idea came first, then came the actions, right? As opposed to the barter system or a free market system. Those came as a reaction to things that were already happened. So again, does the philosophy come first or does the physical action come first too? And I think what we will see throughout this, and I'd like to talk about maybe let's go into plot two here before going too much further. But a man of action and a man of intellect are things that Tolstoy clearly is looking to explore in this book too. And we see this kind of at the end of part one, right? Where Anna leaves the ball and she's, you know, upset because she's like, I haven't done anything, but she feels guilty already. And that's something too to relate is sometimes we feel guilt of just our thoughts betraying us. And that says a lot about Anna and her character. Let's do a quick plot recap for part two and then move into the discussion for that. So we're leaving Moscow society and now entering Petersburg society life. Anna has several social circles around her and we start to see more of the grand society, which just so happens to be where Vronsky is too. Vronsky courts Anna and his cousin Betsy almost relishes in the drama of it. Karenin is rather disconnected over the whole ordeal, only caring about his social appearance and even watches the two converse in private at a party. Vronsky's advances eventually turn physical. Meanwhile, Levin turns to farming. Lots of farming. So much farming. So much farming. And he fixes what's broken and prepares for spring. Now Stepan Oblonsky soon comes to visit and tells him how Kitty is still unmarried. Wink, wink, Levin. You got a chance, bro. Now Stepan wants to hunt and to sell some of his land as well. Levin informs him that he's not getting his due rate and that the country folk are just taking advantage of him. Society continues to judge Anna and Vronsky. But as long as it's on the DL, they don't get into too much of their business. Anna informs Vronsky she is now pregnant. The Karenins are at a horse race and Vronsky competes. He falls and his horse breaks its back. Anna wants to find out if Vronsky is OK, but Mr. Karenin rushes her away. Anna admits to her husband about the affair and that she hates him. Mr. Karenin replies that she's to continue acting as his wife until further actions may be taken. Meanwhile, Kitty is in emotional distress. She needs a rest after the Vronsky-Levin ordeal. And at a spa town in Germany, Kitty Shcherbatskaya gets tired of the social pecking order. She befriends a girl, Varenka, who is looking after Madame Stahl. Soon Nikolai Levin and a prostitute arrive at the spa and Kitty is disgusted with them. Varenka had a similar situation with her mother in stopping a marriage and tells her what's important is not the insult, but whether she loves the man. Madame Stahl, Vronsky's mother, pretends to be religious and an invalid, but is revealed to be false when Kitty's father arrives. Moving into discussion of part two. Can we start with the horse? Are we starting with the horse? I feel like we got to start with the horse. A horse, a horse, a horse, of course. How did you take this horse? Seriously? I feel like this has got to be foreshadowing something bad to come. Yeah, I don't know if it's happened yet. I feel like that it hasn't. But like, yeah, I'm not super familiar with a lot of the literature or criticism in this, I don't know how common this is. But I mean, Tolstoy was kind of hitting it on the head or accidentally made it very apparent that there's a lot of comparisons of war or vying for something when it comes to love. And if we remember when Kitty was getting ready for the bulge, you remember how he described her getting ready? No. Kitty was feeling a sensation akin to the sensation of a Oh, that's right. Yeah. And then later with Anna, she felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. So you can see how he's using these terms of war, of battle, describing these two girls getting ready to go out and, and socialize, potentially flirt with men. And you'll notice too that the opponent horse, do you remember what the opponent's horse name was in this? Gladiator, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we have this Colosseum like name, even in the horses that are competing as well. Now, what's interesting is, I think I heard you mentioned earlier, that Tolstoy loved describing Anna in her eyes and the fire within her. Yeah. Well, he describes the horse, her eye full of fire. Dot dot dot. Oh, crap. Wait a minute. That was Yeah. Yeah. He's describing it as a battle. He's describing it as a war. Vronsky is riding this horse. And I'm not saying that Tolstoy meant to be like, oh, women are horses like that might be a little bit too crude of an interpretation to me. But I think he's showing you that in battle, Vronsky was responsible for the horse. And what happened? How did he crash the horse? He stopped paying attention. He got distracted for a moment during the race. And that's what caused the horse to trip, break, break its back, et cetera, et cetera. So to the point of foreshadowing, I'm not saying Anna is the horse, but I'm saying Vronsky in battle gets distracted and loses the battle. But he comes away. OK, he's not harmed. The horse, however, is going to lose its life. And I'm not saying that Anna is going to lose her life, but I think Anna is going to be the one that's damaged in this battle. She's the one that's going to break her back, perhaps. And Vronsky is going to walk away just fine, is my guess by the end of the battle, just based on the foreshadowing in the scene. Agreed. Yeah, that's a nice job, Mr. Tolstoy. Wow. That's I died. Do I want to read the rest of this book? I'm so happy right now. I don't want it to be bad, Una. Well, it's taking you to a positive place. It's Russian. We got to put misery on top of misery, where we find that there is even more misery underneath that, because after all of this, you know, Mr. Crennan, OK, OK, is he going to is he going to be the character that misery loves company? And Mr. Crennan is the same way where he's just like cold. He's heartless. He's about duty. He's like, I've asked you three times to take my arm. You will take my arm. And, you know, they end up walking away together when they have their discussion and such. But you can see that. He is cold, calculating, but also to the point of entering into battle for love, he's unharmed as well. Right. It's it's typically the women who are suffering, if you compare this even with Dali and Stepan earlier, too, right? Well, I think at this point in time, I would almost say that Mr. Crennan is is not in love with his wife. She's merely not even arm candy. She's an accessory to him just to keep the status of being a married couple in 19th century Russia at his social peak is something that has to have like you have to have X, Y and Z of material possessions in our time today. You have to have an iPhone to be cool. You have to have a wife to be somebody in his society. And that's all Anna is, I would argue to this point. I feel that he doesn't even love her. Not really. He has going back to our previous discussion in part one, he has this trait about men of action and men of intellect, where if you were producing, if you're creating, if you're moving things forward, that's generally more positive than a man who is scheming, collecting things that aren't physical, that aren't connected to this world. It's a trait that we've seen time and time again in his short stories like later on in life after his religious crisis. But we see it here like right before his religious breakdown as well, that he still has these connections of the more connected you are with work of action, the more fortuitous your life is going to be. For sure. And so do you think that Mr. Crennan is not doing that? And that's why Tolstoy is writing him this way? Well, what's he pursuing? He is intellectual. He is pursuing career advancements. None of these things are things that are connected with, I don't want to say naturalism because naturalism has some different meanings when it comes to literature, but he does not connect to nature the way that Mr. Levin does. And it's worth pointing out too that Leo Tolstoy's first name is Lev, right? And Levin is kind of- I was wondering if we were going to mention that. Yeah, it's kind of the embodiment of Tolstoy. I don't want to say it's not a biographical take on him, but we have talked about for, because I've read the later part of his life biography for our short story endeavor with him. And remember, he was the aristocrat, one of the most wealthy people in Russia, one of the most well-known Russians. And he would work the land along with peasants. And that's literally what Levin is doing. So he's kind of tipping the hat a little bit, I think, to the things that are important in his life, which is connection with nature and action. To bring it back again to part one, just one more time, is Levin really isn't, I think, the embodiment here of that connection to nature. He knows about all of his cows and their conditions, and he pays more attention to them. And I don't know exactly that the cow is supposed to be, you know, an allegory here for the women in these people's lives, but he is definitely giving more attention to his cows than these other yuckles are giving to their wives. And that says volumes. And I think it's even more obvious, too, when, you know, Levin's just like, I gotta go farm, and he, like, feels great. Like, Tolstoy spends so much time writing about farming, and does it drag for you? It could. But it also shows that dedication. And maybe life isn't constantly about to be seeking excitement the way that Vronsky is the ass-beat, constantly living for himself. Levin gets satisfaction not through constant new stimuli, but through the satisfaction and joy of getting really good at something, being connected with nature and such. And it's kind of funny, when he comes back to the house, and Kuzmyshev, his half-brother, is like, I solved two chess problems today! Like, what? Like, that does anything? I love some of the dry comedy in here thrown in. It's great. I think that really, for me, I feel that Tolstoy is gonna, for me, I really feel like Tolstoy is set up not, and with that allegory of a chess match, that, and it does almost feel like it's the country boy versus the city elite, and who is gonna win out here, who's gonna get, you know, the happy ending in the story, and I mean, if we know anything about Tolstoy, we kind of see where this is heading, even this early in the novel. So let's talk about one more thing in chapter two here, before moving on, and that's that love is an ailment, right? With Kitty, after she gets shot down from the ball, she feels terrible, and sometimes in literature, authors will take characters and their problems become diseases or ailments, right? Like, heart attacks are sometimes, like we saw in the short story by Kate Chopin, it shows when the character's heart is breaking, they have the heart attack, right? Here, she's starting to feel sick because of all these love issues that she's having, and she goes to the spa, almost as like this restorative cure, right? And if we remember, she's at the spa, right? And what a lot of writers use, the water, baptism, I really think this is Kitty's baptism, this rebirth of her, she's reinventing herself of, she's going to move forward and do things better for her life. That's a really good point, 10 points for you on that one. And if water is the rebirth for her, then does that mean wheat is Levin's rebirth material? Well, I mean, I guess, you know, springtime is a renewal of life, it could be, I mean, in a roundabout kind of way. But I think you have a good point, is that this is her rebirth, this is her coming of age moment, I don't know if that's the right term, but we see the way that Varenka kind of lives for others, I guess, she's dedicating her life to Stahl and helping, and she tries to emulate this, right? With the painter. And, you know, when Kitty starts trying to be nice to the stranger, the wife starts to get a little upset because the husband starts falling in love with Kitty. And Kitty can't just live for what she does. She has to live for herself, in a sense. Well, I think one thing that we really haven't talked a lot about, you know, as we start introducing these other characters and new relationships forming is jealousy, right? We haven't talked about that these people are finally giving up the notion that I have to live, not vicariously, but literally through somebody else, and that I can live for myself, and then others are seeing their happiness and thinking, wait a minute, you're not allowed to be happy. And they're getting jealous of their spouse's happiness as we see the story progress forward. And I think we see that you have to be true to your desires, right? You just can't copy someone else's way of finding love. You have to find out what is your version to really reach what is ultimately true love. And I think that's kind of the moment of clarity for Kitty here. And I'm hoping, I'm hoping that as we start moving into future sections, we start to see Kitty and Leaven start to rekindle that fire, in a sense. They have both a long way to come. I mean, they have to forgive themselves. They have to forgive their situations. I think that it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be more difficult for her than it is for him, because he knows, I think, what he wants. He's just gonna have to move forward with doing that. And we'll see. I mean, he will get shot down again. I hope not. That's just the genius of Tolstoy. We talked about how layered this is, right? So you brought up forgiveness. Mr. Karenin, for example, he doesn't forgive. He's rather stoic. And I think that's what's stilting his ability to find love and happiness in life. And then you have Dolly, who I think, oh gosh, how do we describe Dolly? I think she does forgive. But the problem is that even if you forgive and there's no love in your relationship, like with Stepan, you'll still find unhappiness. So the ability to forgive, to have true love, and to find that connection with someone, it's no wonder so many people are lonely and so many happies are unhappy when we have all of these different standards of what it means to love someone. And do you think, too, that with Dolly and Mr. Karenin, that they're a little bit naive, just in different ways, and maybe that might be their issue with love? I think every character has a level of naivety in it. And maybe it's my hopeless romantic, you're going to hate me for saying this, but I think also when you forgive someone, you have to do it with love. And I know you're going to groan at me for that, but I'm just going to throw that out there. That, hey, that was my takeaway. My boy Tolstoy, okay, that's what I think he's saying to me. No love at first sight, but you have to forgive with love, guys. You heard it here first from Una. All right, let's move on to part three, and then we'll wrap up. So you are a hopeless romantic. I am, I am, I am. Let's move into part three, and we'll wrap up the story here. So Sergei Ivanovich Krosnichev, Levin's half-brother, comes to visit Levin, and they discuss farming. Shocking. Big surprise. First intellectual pursuits. After this, Levin eventually receives a request to help Dolly. She's been sent to the country to save money, their finances are in ruin. Dolly takes care of the children the best that she can, trying to set a good example by bringing them to places such as, hey, church. Now, meanwhile, Stepan goes to horse races and lives as if he didn't have any responsibilities, and we start to haste upon more and more. Levin arrives, and Dolly suggests to Levin, hey, maybe you should try a kitty again. Just because you get rejected once doesn't mean you're going to be rejected every time, right? He's pretty resistant to this, so what's he do? He goes and farms. But this is the best part. What pulls him out is when he sees another peasant couple farming, he's like, well, maybe I could love someone if they loved to farm too. Oh, kitty's not going to love to farm, bro. All right, meanwhile, Mr. Karenin contemplates how to solve his issue with Anand Bronski. They could have a duel, they could have a divorce, because, remember, she's the one that's wrong, so he could take the child away and basically win the divorce because he's not in the wrong, because this is a fault country. At fault country. Or turn to religion. Hey, that sounds like a good idea. But ultimately, you know what, he just doesn't want Bronski or Ana to be happy, so the best thing to do would be just to keep moving on as if we were still married, and hey, don't invite Bronski over to my house, but hey, you can not carry up your wively duties, just carry on in public, if you will. Ana is shocked when she receives this letter from him, and she feels trapped, she feels guilty as a wife, we'll have to talk about that, neglected by her husband. Now, Karenin tells her that she must keep up her facade, yada yada yada. Meanwhile, back to farming. Levin talks with locals about how things need to change for Russian farming. Levin is distrustful of foreign techniques. I joke, but I do enjoy these parts. Levin is distrustful of foreign techniques. Levin creates unique opportunities for shared labor amongst his peasants and ownership of the land, but it doesn't really motivate them at all, at least at first, until it does, and he decides he needs to write a book. Nikolai arrives, mocks him a bit, and says it's just a strange form of communism, and I feel like I'm going to get a Kirinfo dump, am I getting a Kirinfo dump here? Uh, no, I think we'll do that in the before, I think we'll do that in the before, but it is interesting how this part of the story, I don't know, I feel like Tolstoy must have been reading the economy section of the newspaper before he wrote part three, uh, because we have like, love story, love story, love story, part one and two, all this, you know, family drama, love story, and then suddenly we're in the economy and capitalism, communism, private life, work life, all this thrown into the mix, it's like, wow, we took a 180, right? Yes, but at the same time, I mean, I'm still surprised regardless, like, I don't want to say I knew this was coming, but at the same time, we've read enough works from this time in Russia to know that this is just a hot topic, right? Like, this is something that is on the mind of everyone, so I think it's natural that an author will write about the things that are on people's minds at the time, which is what I think he's doing here, but also I think in typical Tolstoy fashion, he's going to make sure that everybody knows that hard work is the way to go, and we see that in a ton of his later short stories that are tend to be a little bit more kind of like parables, fables, if you will, like something to instruct, something to teach, a very simple point. This is Tolstoy earlier in his career, I don't want to say like beginning, but it's before his religious breakdown, and he has much bigger and broader in terms of scope ways of talking about what is ultimately that working hard good and not working hard bad is kind of one way to look at this. For sure, and if you see in this part, all the people that have been working hard seem to be doing okay financially, or they don't really like bring it up as an issue, they just want to make things better for everybody, and yet all the socialites are suddenly struggling with their finances, and it really goes into the nitty-gritty of I owe this many rupees, and I got to pay this off, and I got to pay, you know, my bookie before my tailor, and it really is that idea of, you know, you've got more, you've spent more, well maybe you should work more to be able to spend more. And we even have the usual where Levin is suspicious, perhaps, when it comes to farming, when it comes to French language, we see a lot of Russian pride from Levin, which is, again, another Tolstoy-ism. I'm not saying Levin is Tolstoy, but I'm saying that he is definitely the vehicle in which, you know, the core things that are important to to Mr. Tolstoy is working hard, working next to the peasants in the same way that he did. All that gets injected while the chef over here is just solving two chess problems, right? Well, I think that's a little jab at the two different sides of the game of the board, as we see the rest of the world is modernizing, and Russia's kind of falling behind, and Tolstoy does think it's just hard work, and they shouldn't rely on all these new contraptions and gizmos, and maybe that's him a little bit leery of technology, and why we see trains come up so often, as trains are starting to be, you know, a very popular form of transportation in Russia, and they haven't quite still built, you know, the Trans-Siberian one across the whole country yet, but I think that, yeah, he's trying to say maybe we shouldn't incorporate all these Western ideas too much yet and stick to what we know. Well, and trains can represent progress a lot of the times, particularly when it comes to, we're still talking about industrialization, as you're starting to bring up. Now, let's talk about the lack of progress, and that might be the Oblonsky character, Stepan, who, when we go to the country, like the state, he hasn't done any of the repairs that he's supposed to. We got pretty curtains, it looks real nice, but he hasn't done any of the work that actually matters, and I think, you know, this is obviously meant to be a foil, part of the brilliant weaving that Tolstoy does, because you have Levin having that conversation of why do we need education, which is a hot take, right? I mean, I get that we just abolished serfdom and such, but it's kind of interesting the way that he's like, I don't know, I didn't quite get the character's point yet about why we didn't need education. Maybe I just don't agree with it is what it is, and we should just work hard, but then you have Oblonsky who's not working hard and is educated, but his finances are a little bit in ruin, and, you know, he's sending his wife out to the country, and he's not even taking care of the things that he's supposed to take care of. Like, he's not making the progress he's supposed to make, is the way I think, you know, I might interpret Tolstoy's writing here. The way I interpret it, he's increasing the divide between him and Dolly, and almost that old adage, or maybe it's a new adage when Tolstoy was writing it, is that behind every great man there's a great woman, and that Dolly really is the glue to this family, and she's holding everything together, and without her it would fall apart financially and physically. Everything would be gone without her. Well, to that exact point, so if Steva is the man of intellect, Dolly is the woman of action. She's the one that's actually holding the family together, and we see that, like we talked about, Tolstoy makes the people who make action the ones that prosper and do well, and if you look at Mr. Karenin here at the end, you see that he's not a of action. He's a man of intellect, pursuing his career opportunities as opposed to fixing his marriage, fixing his private life. He's so worried about public life that he's not taking care of his own private life, and I think that's part of what I think is going to be his downfall, and why I'm assuming the relationship isn't going to work out. He's going to have to have one heck of a light bulb moment and turn around in order to start selling these shirts, man. I don't think it's going to happen. For the Karenin's relationship, Mr. Karenin is a guy that is so worried about public perception that he doesn't really even know what a true relationship is. He's the guy that is so worried about, you know, how he's going to be perceived, and this guy's not coming back. Not that he's the villain of the story, but I don't think there's redemption for him, really, because he doesn't care, or he doesn't care about the right things to make a family work in Tolstoy's eyes. Well, and maybe that's just part of Tolstoy's brilliant writing, right? Because the foil to this, like we talked about how everything has a foil, is Levin, who only cares about his private life, and I think that's why we're rooting for him, is because he is probably searching for love and finding who he is, and you know, even like his half-brother, Krosnischeff, when he's like, why aren't you involved in public affairs anymore? Why don't you care about this? He's like, I don't care about that, right? You've got to take care of yourself before you look about the world externally, and I think that's an ongoing motif that I think Tolstoy likes to write about that we've seen, and I'm sure we'll continue to explore that as we move forward into the next parts of this book. Isn't that kind of true of how a lot of relationships, how we put on a mask, a front for our public life, but internally, you know, we're struggling, and I think that kind of hinting a little bit here, kind of some early like mental problems of like depression and anxiety, and you know, people are, they're putting on this front to show off, but in actuality, they're hurting inside, and maybe Mr. Karenina is, and just, we don't know it yet. Well, all right guys, we'll leave a link down below for the playlist for all of Anna Karenina in-depth as we get to them. Again, at the time of this talk, we're going through the book, but we'll have a before-you-read with all the stuff that we wish we had kind of had the right frame set of mind kind of going into before this. So check out that playlist down below if you'd like to check out all the talks, and we'll also leave a link to Christy Lewis's channel where we're having a live stream talk with another panel of people who are reading this. If you're looking for a broad range of options, there's no shortage with what is one of the world's most-read books of all time, Anna Karenina. We look forward to joining you on the journey. Una out. I love you, Una. Peace. What kind of love? Is it a familial love? Is it a YouTube love? Like, what are we talking about? We're going too deep. It's farming love. All right, guys, subscribe, like. We'll see you later.