The Humble Man

The Humble Man

So I want to reintroduce the idea in my thought piece from last week about Tolstoy proposing that the humble man acquires happiness in the end. I think that we can look at both Pierre and Princess Mary to find great examples of this theory.

Throughout the book, Mary has been pretty unhappy, sacrificing herself for her father, brother, and nephew. But in the end, she finds complete happiness with her marriage to Nicholas. Being the most religious character of the book, she always sought to accept God’s will over her own. I think this goes back to the passage I brought up last time of Andrew’s meditations in surgery when he realizes that compassion is the key to life. On page 956, the narrator comments that “the essence of life” is love. I don’t think this love is Natasha’s passionate love we encounter at the beginning of the novel, but rather Mary’s love for Nicholas, Natasha’s love for Andrew after his injury, and Pierre’s love for Natasha after his captivity. What is Tolstoy pointing at with the “happy ending” of Mary? (Aside from the fact that he does not understand the female psyche at all…)

As for Pierre, he has this complete spiritual awakening while he is imprisoned in Moscow. He meets Platon Karataev (whose first name is an allusion to the philosopher Plato), a simple peasant. Through his interaction with Platon, Pierre recognizes that he no longer needs to search for the meaning of life in various philosophies such as the Masons, but rather accept life for what it is in accordance with divine will. Tolstoy writes that “That search for an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere” (977). Once again, we see the idea that once Pierre is humbled and becomes a much simpler man, he finds true happiness in his own life and with Natasha.

We spent much of seminar Wednesday talking about what we can learn from the book if the causal relationship of history is so complex. I think that the humility of man is one of the key lessons of War and Peace.