Like the pulling of the strings of a puppet, time is a …show more content…
It allows things to emerge, but also to disappear, out of the present and into the past. Like the puppet, beings have limited free-will in this movement. We are governed by space and time, and cause and effect. Every past decision and action is essentially the antecedent of present decisions and actions; hence, history is merely a product of causality. In War and Peace, Tolstoy’s depiction of the war of 1812 proves that history is not created by a few great men, but by the actions of the masses. Tolstoy compares human history to a clockface, every individual representing its gears, wheels, and pulleys. “As in the mechanism of a clock, so also in the