Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's Work

Born September 9th 1828 into a wealthy Russian household, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy more commonly known as, Leo Tolstoy is renown as one of the greatest world literature prolific authors of all time. While only a child, Tolstoy’s parents died leaving it up to family members to raise him and educate him. His profound love of wanting to become a writer started at the age of twenty-three. According to Daniel Burt, Burt states that “no author has ever shown such a power of insight into the variety of life—the differences, the contrasts, the collisions of persons and things and situations” (2). This is evident of Tolstoy’s work which can be found in a majority of his works because there is a determined search of understanding one’s self and increasing …show more content…
Tolstoy’s short stories are short fiction stories that often translate some form of his personal life. For example, much of Tolstoy’s life revolved around death. His first experience happened around 1862 with his marriage to Sophia Tolstaya. Tolstoy fathered thirteen children and four out of his thirteen children had died either from birth or later on in their life-time. Their deaths became utterly hard upon Tolstoy, which brought about a change. “The inevitability of death inspired a spiritual crisis and renunciation of his life” (“Death of Ivan llyach, An Introduction to” 252). Tolstoy began to emphasize on human perceptions and how it changes when one comes close to death. Tolstoy started to question the value of his life, started to live a non-materialistic life, and excommunicated himself from the Russian Orthodox Church solely to focus on the teachings of Jesus. All these experiences eventually lead to the development of the short story The Death of Ivan llyach (1886). The Death of Ivan llyach was written in response to the people of the 19th century Russia who experienced spiritual warfare and needed an awakening. This became the central theme of his short story The Death of Ivan llyach and was producing moral lessons to multitudes of readers in his time. A more in depth analysis on Tolstoy’s short story work is that “many critics characterize his novella’s as a blend of practical storytelling and …show more content…
However, one novel in particular that sparked world literature fame was Anna Karenina (1877). Anna Karenina was and still is a masterpiece because it incorporates all the elements of humanity such as lustful passions, pride, conflict, marriage, and death. An in depth analysis of Anna Karenina is that it was a heavily controversial novel. Convoluted plot lines, character development, relationships, and social commentary, gave meaning to this novel. The concept of writing this novel came to Tolstoy in 1870, when middle class women were committing numerous acts of adultery, which became a social normality. Tolstoy was perplexed and responded to this issue, by developing a novel revealing to readers of his time potential disastrous consequences of such an act. To do this, Tolstoy had to portray life as not how it should be, rather, how it actually is. This ideology is known as realism. Tolstoy uses his realist gift to write about a woman having fallen in her honor of marriage. Anna Karenina is based off of the character, Anna Karenina, who is an upper class married woman that creates conflict with her husband, Alexi Karenin, a government minister. Tolstoy in part one chapter one gives readers insight as to what the story may be foreshadowing. According to Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy states that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (1). Marriage in Russia