Friends For The Journey

I think that Tolstoy was trying to get accross two primary points in his novel. One, war and peace necessitate each other, and two, life goes on.

(You’ll be kind enough to forgive my spelling and gramatical errors, as I have recently had to do a system recovery on my computer and don’t have Word installed at the moment.)

This is a fairly over used line of thought, many republicans I’ve known have mandated that to attain peace one must make war. I don’t completely agree with that line of thought. I think that what Tolstoy was after, was something like, external war brings internal peace, and vise versa. You see, the three primary “good-guy” characters in the novel all exist in a time of war. Andrey is involved in the war from the very beginning, and is also in a state of peace almost throughout the novel. Not always a true peace, but some sort of simplicity. In the very beginning, he goes off to war in order to escape the wife that he doesn’t love. Once he arrives in the army, he feels free, unbound, and at peace. As the story goes on his wife dies and soon he falls in love with another girl. The girl recipricates at first but is later decieved by another man who claims to love her. She falls into the trap and hurts Andrey deeply enough that he goes back to war in order to find peace once more. Although he does find a sort of peace, it’s not as true as before. The external war that he is waging has become a cover-up for his pain. Much like a drug, you get a feeling of him being adicted to war because of it’s simplicity. However, the theme remains, drug or no, the external war is bringing internal peace. Finally he gets seriously wounded in battle, and is rushed to be taken care of somewhere in the back part of Russia. He encounters his sister, and Natasha (the girl he had fallen in love with), and there is resolution and peace within the three as the external struggle for survival takes place. He slips steadily on into the other world that awaits us in his final weeks of life.
At the same time, Tolstoy constrasts the battle-front with the peaceful lives of those not involved in the war. Almost all of the characters not directly involved in the war but rather involved in the society of Russia come to terrible fates. They died, lost everything, or otherwise suffered. It’s my belief that their external peace was the harbinger of their internal war. Politics are such that often war is waged without a single blow. As war slowly but surely found it’s way to the gates of Moscow, upon arriving, it brought a strange sort of peace to the scene. A sort of cleansing of the city took place in which all the previous tenants dispersed and it was replaced with, once more, an external war, but an internal peace in those still occupying the city.
Our second character is Pierre. A relatively young man and a good friend of Andrey’s, Pierre comes into a large inheiritance from his father, and is introduced into Russian high-society early on in the novel. Though most would see what happened to him as good luck, (what with the money and all) in actuality it may have been his down fall. Though externally he is doing quite well, internally he is constantly struggling with himself. He’s got a taste for drinking and gambling and although he continuously makes covenants with himself that he won’t ever do those things he does them the same night none the less. I can relate personally with the character of Pierre, because I’ve struggled with the same feeling so many times. It’s as if I draw the battle lines, between me and that which I know is evil, and yet before the fight takes place I surrender because I know I’ve already been beaten. So then, he’s constantly in a battle internally. We see a sudden change in Pierre though, about half way through the novel, he disguises himself as a servant and attempts to escape his life of wealth and high standing. He heads to the nearby countryside where the battle is now being waged between Napolean Bonaparte’s army, and that of the Russians. He spends an entire day in the thick of the fight simply standing and watching as the Russian cannoneers are firing away at Frenchmen, while under heavy fire themselves. At the end of the day he some how finds a horse and rides straight into the thick of the fighting with no weapons and only a desire to be involved in such an event. He comes out of the event unscathed and finally achieves inward peace. After heading back to Moscow, he is later taken as a hostage while trying to save innocents from French deserters. During this time of outward travail he becomes a man of inner purpose and outer confidence.

The guards fear him!

The third character is probably my favorite, although only briefly mentioned in the book, his name is Petya, which I believe means Rock in Russian. This young man of only 13 or 14 comes into the story the night before a Russian raid on a French battalion. Petya is still a child, but he longs to prove himself as a great hero in battle. One scene in particular is my favorite, in which he’s sitting at a table with several other russian officers, eating a meal. As they are talking, Petya goes out and brings in some packages. One bag contained flints and the other raisins, he offers the others his belongings freely practically begging them to take from what he had. He impressed me with his earnest nature and kind-heartedness, even to the extent of wanting to feed a young French boy who had been taken captive earlier that day. It’s obvious that he is utterly at peace with himself and with others. The next day they ride out and his strongest desire is to prove himself in battle, to do something heroic. He finds his opportunity when several Russians are pinned down by the French and charges towards the Frenchmen on his horse. He’s shot in the head and upon finding the boy dead, his friend and fellow officer Denisov hears young Petya’s voice in his head saying, “I’m fond of sweet things. They are capital raisins, take them all.” Almost instantly in this scene we see that as soon as the external war resigns to external peace, internal war sprouts up in the emotions of Denisov.
It seems to me that Tolstoy is trying at least to show that War and Peace necessitate each other and that they simply must coinside, at least in this life. The books ends with two of the lesser characters beginning a relationship together. They fall in love and apparently the cycle is renewed. Life goes on.
In the end I was struck by a sense of repulsion at the fact that life could go on so easily and happily after all that had happened to the beloved characters of the story, but in the end I realized that that was as it should be. Jesus himself told the disciples to let the dead take care of the dead, but to follow Him. An excellent novel over all, and much less depressing than most Russian literature. =O)