War and Peace Ending [spoilers]
Apologies if this has been said a million times but I gotta get WnP ending into words. (note: this post is purely my interpretation). I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t like his ‘ramblings’ about military strategy, history, philosophy etc. but I feel like the entire novel is one microcosm of all of these sentiments that he has. Obviously a key part of his belief is that no one man has the ability to significantly alter history, and that humans don’t have complete free will in the way we think we do, and that morality depends on the circumstances.
Each character in the book changed in a way that he/her does not necessarily ‘intend’, ie Pierre had grand plans to kill Napolean, becoming a mason, freeing his Serfs, etc. He yearned for self sacrifice and intellectual freedom and some grand action to cement himself but he ends with satisfaction purely in his family life and with love. Petya was shot in the head and this is due to pure chance, to me it was implied that he also fantasized to become a successful soldier just like his brother, Denisov, etc. and he was killed by pure chance. Andrey starts in the beginning with conceit, disillusionment, etc. and he dies due to a piece of shrapnel.
My point being that Tolstoy’s philosophical interjections are the *story* itself, and the plot of the book is his way of saying “here is a microscopic *example* of this philosophical narrative”. The epilogue really just feels like a bow on the plot, saying “here is how my philosophy manifests in real life, this book is my way of arguing my beliefs”.
Apologies if this sounds like nonsense but I’m still enthralled with how genius this book was. I hope this doesn’t sound like complete nonsense lmao