FINALLY!!!
Sometimes when you are reading a very long book which is dull and making no sense, you still keep on reading, and when you reach the last page, you’re glad you did, because you understand why the author needed so many pages to tell you what he did. This was not the case with Anna Karenina.
I didn’t find the title “Anna Karenina” to be suitable for this novel. I felt like it didn’t have much to do with just Anna, and I understand those of you who’ll say that in a way everyone were “mingled” into each other’s affairs and so on. But still the whole Kitty-Levin-affair we could do just fine without! And I know Anna and Vronskij’s relationship and Kitty’s and Levin’s were supposed to be some kind of contrast, but I think Tolstoy could have “maintained” that contrast very nicely without them, because we do have Stepan and his wife. They had more of a similar story going on as the one with Anna and her husband (+Vronsky). And if he stopped the novel, right then, when Anna commits suicide, I could live with the title, but clearly it had to do with more than just her, since Tolstoy goes on about the lives of other people, such as Levin’s brother and so on after her death, which I found to be rather odd. But that might just be me feeling that the story should end with Anna, rather than Levin. I also understand that the author got many of his “ideas and thoughts” out through Levin, but he could have written a whole other book for that purpose.
On the foreword to the Norwegian translation of Anna Karenina, there is said that there neither is given an account of Anna as a bad person or a good one in the novel, which I don’t agree with. I disliked Anna; I didn’t like her the least, and there must have been something in the novel which made me feel that way. For me the novel was too simple; there were no climax or turning-point (surely they were there, but just not that “visible”). The story line was just “sailing” its way while you were getting sea-sick. And I reached the point where I started counting how many pages I had left of the book for every page I finished reading.
The opening line. Can someone please be so kind and tell me why there’s such a huge fuss about it? Thank you.
The “foreshadowing” was the only brilliant thing about this novel. I could never imagine that the “train-accident, where a man was run over by a train” the day Anna and Vronsky met for the first time would be Anna’s destiny too. So when she decided to kill herself that way, I though “Clever you are: Tolstoy”. And no there’s nothing cynical about wanting Anna to just go jump off a cliff or something, I just wish she did it many pages before, since I started getting sick of her threats. I also think Anna had some serious psychological issues. She was too demanding and overly-jealous; paranoid might be the right word, like she’d only be happy if Vronsky were within her eyes “reach” 24/7. She didn’t love her daughter who she had right there, and “remembered” her love for her son first when she run away with her lover. It’s like nothing makes the woman happy, she wants more and more and more, and that more should be hard to get or there’s no fun in getting it!!!
Did even ONE chapter go without someone having tears in their eyes, then I’d like to know!! All the women were too dramatic. Most (or all) of the characters feelings changed rapidly from one page to another. I really believed Vronsky loved Anna until he started doubting his love in one page, and 5 pages after loved her again, and 3 pages after then again were having some other thoughts. What was up with that? Couldn’t there be any gliding changes rather than the hard-to-believe and dramatic ones which only left the reader questioning about ther mental state?
At the end Anna says herself that she only wanted to be Vronsky’s “mistress”, if so, why didn’t she just go on with her husband’s “plan”, where she could be Vronsky’s lover, and still live on “honourably” as the wife of Aleksej? I still don’t get why she didn’t divorce him when he (her husband) offered it. And to say it was because of the son is just sillier, because it’s not like she cared much about him anyway. Did she go visit him more than just once? NO!! So the whole deal about not wanting to part with the son and so were just bull. Anna was just full of too much crap. The least she could do was stand up for her actions, instead she used every day feeling sorry for herself and blaming her whole “condition” on Vronsky.
Plus why did never Dolly ask Anna why she was leaving her husband when she told Dolly not to leave hers. I’d like to know that!!
Why did I finish it when I didn't like it? I'm a patient person, what can I do?
I'll comment some more later, feel like it's enough for now.
PS! There were someone here saying that the characters were realistic and believable (or something like that). Either you were living in that period or I've gone crazy, because I really don't share everyone's "humble" feelings for this book. But we are all allowed to disagree; sure everyone can't love it.