So I'm reading War and Peace by Tolstoy for the first time. I figured I would do a writing exercise where I lay out my thoughts on what I've read so far and use it as further analysis for when I finish the book and inevitably write more about it. Because the book is some 1200 pages, I thought breaking it down into parts might be easier to read and understand, mostly for myself, but also for the readers. So without further adieu, here are my thoughts on War Peace Parts I-V, approximately from page 1 to 400, about 1/3 of the book. This will read like a reaction review.
For starters, this book is amazing. The beginning is quite complicated because Tolstoy introduces many characters at once, everybody is chatty, and many characters are introduced right after the other. What you get is that there are about 3 or 4 major characters, and everyone else are minor characters that might get more screen time later on, presumably.
Pierre appears to be the "main", main character, a bastard son who's committed some crimes in the past, like the hilarious crime where he tied a police officer to a bear. He inherits a large some of money from the Count, his father, and is troubled by what he must do with it, as well as what he should do with his life in general. He thinks his wife is having an affair with a family friend, a gentlemen he's helped greatly in life. Pierre challenges him to a duel, and the poor man doesn't even fire at Pierre because of everything Pierre's done for him, but Pierre shoots him, satisfying his ego but destroying his soul in the process. Later, Pierre tries to pick the pieces and come to grace, by becoming a Freemason and changing his life forever, trying to become a better man; a better man to his peasants, his family, and his friends. Tolstoy goes into great detail, displaying Pierre's initiation into Freemasonry, and its quite what you would expect.
Prince Andrey seems to be another important, "main", character. He joins the army and fights against the French, fighting against Napoleon. He goes to war to prove himself and become a hero, he wants to be loved by men who will never know his name, but instead all he finds is death and suffering. He wants Pierre to apologize to his wife about the duel and the affair, for which Pierre had no evidence, but Pierre wants nothing to do with his wife and says he's done with it forever.
Pierre and Andrey seem to me to be the two most important characters in the novel thus far. There are many other characters; children of the aristocrats [they're all rich people here except for the maids and peasants, who sometimes take on important roles], princesses, counts, generals, soldiers, the list goes on and on, but for me, I tend to focus on Pierre and Andrey because Tolstoy writes them [as well as the minor characters, fantastically] with such detailed precision, its like an x-ray onto the character. Tolstoy goes into the general character, their thoughts, their moods, their language and dialogue, but he also goes into the soul of the character; mind, body, and spirit, which brings me to my next point.
At this point in the book one begins to realize that this is not just a book, not just a story. Sure, there are innovative plot points and the narrative flows better than most fiction today [the development of good story and narration is something I learned a lot about from Don Quixote, but Tolstoy is such a master of this art, that it leaves one awestruck], but what I'm getting at is that this book isn't just a story, or about characters, or about war and peace, rather it could perhaps be a grand philosophical opus. Tolstoy himself said that War and Peace was his take on German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's ideas, particularly his masterpiece, The World as Will and Representation.
Here is where the reader must know Kant, and must know that Schopenhauer's ideas take off from Kant's metaphysical system of transcendental idealism.
Schopenhauer saw the human will as our one window to the reality behind the world as representation, i.e. the external world as we experience it through our mental faculties. According to Schopenhauer, the will is the 'inner essence' of the entire world, i.e. the Kantian thing-in-itself (Ding an sich), and exists independently of the forms of the principle of sufficient reason that govern the world as representation. Schopenhauer believed that while we may be precluded from direct knowledge of the Kantian noumenon, we may gain knowledge about it to a certain extent (unlike Kant, for whom the noumenon was completely unknowable). This is because, according to Schopenhauer, the relationship between the world as representation and the world as it is 'in itself' can be understood by investigating the relationship between our bodies (material objects, i.e. representations, existing in space and time) and our will. [wiki]
That's very intense German metaphysics for the laymen, but the ideas represented do fit like a missing puzzle piece to this great novel. Why do you think this novel is so great? Of course Tolstoy read Schopenhauer and took some ideas of it for War and Peace.
More on this subject when I reach the halfway point. Watch this space.
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