Pierre Bezuhov Illegitimate son of a Russian count, Cyril Bezuhov, who bequeaths Pierre a fortune. Pierre comes in contact with all the other main characters in the novel during his quest to find meaning in life.
Prince Andrey Bolkonsky Handsome, intelligent, cultured, and at times arrogant nobleman who is Pierre’s best friend. He detests the shallow lifestyle he inherits as a member of the Russian upper class. He also despises his wife, who is charming and attractive, because she values the upper-class lifestyle. Like Bezuhov, Bolkonsky searches for meaning in life. Prince Andrey is high-ranking military officer who serves as a valued adjutant to General Kutuzov.
Countess Natasha Rostov Pretty, vivacious, loving young woman who falls in love with Prince Andrey, then becomes infatuated with Anatole Kuragin. She later realizes she has loved Andrey all along. Natasha is the central female character in the novel.
Count Cyril Bezuhov Father of Pierre. The count dies early in the novel, leaving his estate to Pierre..
Prince Nicholas Andreivitch Bolkonsky Father of Prince Andrey. A retired general, he is a stern, eccentric, old-school member of the upper class.
Princess Marya Bolkonsky Daughter of Prince Nicholas. She marries Nicholas Rostov late in the novel.
Princess Lise Bolkonsky Wife of Prince Andrey. She dies in childbirth.
Prince Nicholas (Nicholushka) Son of Andrey and Lise.
Count Ilya Rostov Generous and loving father of the Rostov children. His lavish spending eventually plunges him in debt.
Countess Nataly Rostov Ilya's wife.
Count Petya Rostov Younger son of Ilya and Nataly Rostov.
Countess Vera Rostov Older daughter of Ilya and Nataly Rostov.
Sonya Poor teenage relative of the Rostovs, who have been rearing her as their ward. She loves Nicholas but circumstances prevent their union.
Prince Vassily Kuragin High society wheeler-dealer who manipulates Pierre Bezuhov into marrying his daughter, Hélène, after Pierre inherits his fortune.
Princess Hélène Kuragin Vassily’s self-seeking daughter. She becomes Pierre’s wife but continues to seek the attentions of other men.
Prince Anatole Kuragin Vassily’s dissolute son. He attempts to elope with Natasha Rostov even though he is already married.
Prince Hippolyte Kuragin Vassily's quiet, weak-minded son.
Platon Karataev Peasant who is a cellmate of Pierre after the French arrest Pierre in Moscow. Karataev gives Pierre food and helps him realize what really matters in life.
Anna Pavlovna Scherer St. Petersburg spinster who gives lavish soirees for the high and mighty.
Princess Anna Drubetskoy Impoverished woman who persuades Vassily Kuragin to use his influence to obtain her son an appointment as a military officer.
Prince Boris Drubetskoy Anna Drubetskoy's son.
Dolohov Russian soldier and gambler who has an affair with Pierre’s wife, Hélène. Pierre wounds him in a duel.
Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of France and general of attacking French armies.
Prince Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov Russian general under whom Prince Andrey serves. Kutuzov is appointed field marshal of all the Russian forces before the Battle of Borodino.
Czar Alexander I Ruler of Russia.
Military officers, foot soldiers, nobles, peasants, serfs, servants
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Settings
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(1) Saint Petersburg, capital of Russia from 1712 to 1918. It is a port on the Gulf of Finland and the Neva River, about 400 miles northwest of Moscow, that contains many architectural masterpieces, including Cathedrals and palaces. (2) Moscow, the capital of Russia until 1712, when Czar Peter the Great moved the capital to Saint Petersburg. But Moscow remained and important cultural and industrial center. Napoleon and his Grand Army occupied Moscow for 39 days in 1812. (3) European battlefield sites, including Austerlitz. (4) Russian country estates and villages.
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Themes
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Theme 1..Love and compassion are the keys to a successful and fulfilling life. Pierre Bezuhov spends all of his days searching for the meaning of life. Gradually, he discovers that it lies in bestowing and receiving love and compassion. It matters not who the bestower or recipient is–whether peasant or nobleman, Frenchman or Russian. Pierre realizes the fulness of this truth when he saves the life of a Frenchman from a crazed Russian and when he receives food from a humble peasant in prison.
Theme 2..Human beings are defined by what they do, not by what they have or what they inherit. Most of the Russian upper classes in St. Petersburg and Moscow place a premium on their noble heritage, their estates, their jewels and fashions, their popularity in drawing rooms and ballrooms. They look down upon Pierre Bezuhov because of his illegitimate birth and lack of social graces, then hypocritically treat him like royalty when he inherits a fortune. Pierre, of course, comes to realize that material things and social status mean little; what really counts is the good that a man or a woman does (or, in the case of the dissolute or self-seeking characters in the novel, the evil).
Theme 3..Rather than attempting to control the course of history, human beings must move with its currents. This is Tolstoy’s idea. He believes that history is like a river. Men like Napoleon attempt to divert the river from its true course; men like Kutuzov merely attempt to control the boat they are traveling in, not the river itself. Napoleon fails, Tolstoy says, because no man can manage or manipulate history–that is, fate, destiny. Que sera sera–whatever will be will be. Kutuzov succeeds, Tolstoy maintains, because he understands this great truth.
Theme 4..Acquisition of material possessions does not lead to success or happiness. Hélène Kuragin marries Pierre for his money, then spends it freely on fashions and jewels to enhance her image as the most beautiful and desirable woman in St. Petersburg. But she ends up lonely and unloved and takes her life. Napoleon acquires whole cities and ends up conquering an empty city, Moscow. He achieves nothing but death and destruction. Ultimately, he loses the war.
Theme 5..War is brutal and barbaric, not grand and glorious. Although many young men in St. Petersburg and Moscow regard war as a glorious adventure, it soon becomes apparent that it is nothing of the sort. When Pierre observes the Battle of Borodino, he sees it for what it is: a cruel, brutal destroyer.
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Climax
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The climax of War and Peace occurs at the Battle of Borodino and during its immediate aftermath, when the main Russian characters attain the knowledge and insight they have been seeking and Napoleon discovers he had made a colossal blunder.
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Type of Work
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War and Peace is a panoramic realistic novel that examines the social, familial, historical, and political activities of a society against the backdrop of war, as well as the psychological reactions of people to their lot in life at home and on the battlefield. It was written between 1862 and 1869 and published between 1865 and 1869 by M.N. Katov.
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Structure and Style
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The novel at first focuses on everyday life among the Russian nobility while Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grand Army march across Europe. The story later shifts to the battlefield after the Russians become involved in the war. From then on, the action alternates between scenes of peace and scenes of war. Occasionally, author Tolstoy interrupts his narration (omniscient, third-person point of view) to philosophize about war. The novel thus has three structural divisions: (1) the story centering on fictional characters, (2) the story centering on actual historical events, and (3) the philosophical ruminations of the author. The reader discovers early on that many of the principal characters in the novel are as much at war with themselves as they are with Napoleon. Tolstoy meticulously interweaves the stories of the characters–there are nearly 600 of them–so that they form a single fabric bearing one panoramic picture of life and death in early 19th Century Russia. The descriptions are detailed and realistic, and the story lines believable and engrossing. Characters respond naturally to the forces acting upon them, whether internal or external, with a minimum of author contrivance and manipulation. The reader sees not only flesh-and-blood characters and the environments in which they live but also the characters’ psyches and the conflicts enveloping them. The consensus of critics is that War and Peace is one of the world’s great novels in terms of character and thematic development. However, some of these critics have not read the novel in its original Russian, relying instead on an English (or French, German, or Spanish translation). Consequently, their evaluations lack the authority of Russian-speaking Tolstoy critics able to understand nuances in the original Russian version’s dialogue and imagery.
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Tolstoy's Theory of History
Tolstoy believed that a single man or woman is incapable of manipulating or changing the course of history. History, he says, is an inexorable force that will have its way. For additional information on this topic, see Theme 3 above.
Commentary: Virginia Woolf
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The English writer Virginia Woolf commented on Tolstoy's writing in The Common Reader, a collection of essays she wrote in two installments, the first in 1925 and the second in 1932. In one of the essays, she said of Tolstoy:
There remains the greatest of all novelists—for what else can we call the author of War and Peace? Shall we find Tolstoi, too, alien, difficult, a foreigner? Is there some oddity in his angle of vision which, at any rate until we have become disciples and so lost our bearings, keeps us at arm’s length in suspicion and bewilderment? From his first words we can be sure of one thing at any rate—here is a man who sees what we see, who proceeds, too, as we are accustomed to proceed, not from the inside outwards, but from the outside inwards. Here is a world in which the postman’s knock is heard at eight o’clock, and people go to bed between ten and eleven. Here is a man, too, who is no savage, no child of nature; he is educated; he has had every sort of experience. He is one of those born aristocrats who have used their privileges to the full. He is metropolitan, not suburban. His senses, his intellect, are acute, powerful, and well nourished. There is something proud and superb in the attack of such a mind and such a body upon life. Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him unrecorded. Nobody, therefore, can so convey the excitement of sport, the beauty of horses, and all the fierce desirability of the world to the senses of a strong young man. Every twig, every feather sticks to his magnet. He notices the blue or red of a child’s frock; the way a horse shifts its tail; the sound of a cough; the action of a man trying to put his hands into pockets that have been sewn up. And what his infallible eye reports of a cough or a trick of the hands his infallible brain refers to something hidden in the character, so that we know his people, not only by the way they love and their views on politics and the immortality of the soul, but also by the way they sneeze and choke. Even in a translation we feel that we have been set on a mountain-top and had a telescope put into our hands. Everything is astonishingly clear and absolutely sharp.
Author Information
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Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy was born on Sept. 9, 1828, in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia. His aristocratic parents died when he was very young, and relatives reared him. He attended a university but abandoned his studies before graduating, preferring to educate himself instead. After enlisting in the military, he served in the Crimean War (1853-1856). While in the army, he began writing and completed a short novel in 1852. After returning to Yasnaya Polyana, he worked on his estate, improved the life of his peasant workers, and continued to write. His masterpieces are War and Peace (published between 1865 and 1869) and Anna Karenina (published between 1875 and 1877.
Study Questions and Essay Topics
Which character in the novel do you most admire? Which one do you least admire? Explain your answers.
Readers learn early in the novel that Russian high society looks down on Pierre Bezuhov because he is the illegitimate son of a count. In an informative essay, explain how illegitimacy affected a man's legal rights and social status in early 19th Century Europe.
Does Prince Andrey find what he is seeking in life?
Do you agree with Tolstoy's theory of history?
Tolstoy writes that war is chaotic, unpredictable, depending as much on chance, whim, and luck as on battle strategies for its outcome. Do the developments in recent conflicts involving the U.S. support this observation?
What was your reaction when you learned that Pierre Bezuhov married Natasha Rostov, who had been in love with Prince Andrey?
Does Tolstoy attempt to create heroes and heroines? Or is he more concerned with creating people as they are: a mixture of strength and weakness?
Write an essay comparing and contrasting Pierre Bezuhov and Prince Andrey Bolkonsky.
Write an essay comparing and contrasting Count Ilya Rostov and Prince Vassily Kuragin.
Write an essay comparing and contrasting Natasha Rostov and Hélène Kuragin
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