Anna Karenina: Part 1

Note: Spoilers will be invisible until highlighted.

That note was written in the passive voice. As any high school english student knows, using the passive voice is one of the most egregious sins one can commit in writing.

For those who don't know, passive voice is a grammatical term referring to a certain type of sentence structure. In most sentences, the subject does something. For example: "I ate the food." But in the passive voice, the subject gets something done to it by an unspecified agent. "The food was eaten." The passive voice is thus frowned upon for its vagueness. The sentence doesn't tell us who ate the food!

For a long time, I was unable to put my finger on what made "Anna Karenina" so disturbing in the magnitude of its tragedy. I've read my share of tragedies. Plays in particular, such as "Death of a Salesman" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" have permanently etched themselves into my memory with their tales of woe.

But there's something that Anna Karenina has that just left my speechless when I finished it.

SPOILERS
Anna Karenina is killed.

Despite the things that Anna does throughout the story, including infidelity, manipulation, and even child neglect, one can't help but look at her in awe. Anna is a passionate and well educated woman. She is caring, reflective, and beautiful. She enthralls all around her. She can even stop a divorce. 

But from the moment that Anna Karenina meets Vronsky on the train ride home, Anna Karenina lives her life in the passive voice.

As we read, we see Anna's life gradually slip away from her. All her inner strength and wisdom fail her, and fate becomes her master. In most tragedies, there is some kind of identifiable cause of the protagonist's fall. It could be a tangible entity, or perhaps a hamartia within the character him/herself. But in Anna's case, there is nothing to say. Anna is acted upon by an unspecified agent. Neither the circumstances of her tragedy nor the end result have any kind of ultimate meaning. 

Despite all her beauty, grace, and inner strength, Anna Karenina's story fades away.

This is what twisted my heart the most by the end of Tolstoy's epic. The final 50 pages of the 800 page book have no mention of Anna at all. Vronsky goes on with his life, and Levin takes center stage. Tolstoy creates a void that contrasts all the more powerfully with Levin's search for meaning in life SPOILER and ultimate revelation of faith. But one's heart aches all the same. 

I have come to see Anna Karenina as a sort of "anti Crime and Punishment." For those who haven't read Dostoevsky's work, I highly recommend it, it's what singlehandedly got me into Russian Literature. Both Anna and Raskolnikov commit crimes that seem horrific from an uninformed bystander's perspective. But when one follows their internal thoughts, they pose an intricate web of questions on justice, morality, and the human condition. But whereas Raskolnikov leaves his story with a sense of hope and fulfillment, Anna's leaves it empty.

There is nothing more to say.