The Pen Pal Club

            On the side of our various assignments I decided to tackle the epic War and Peace, just for fun because that’s what the cool kids do. My goal was to finish the entire book during the run of Hughie and I was very excited to achieve my goal.

            I have to admit that I kind of love Tolstoy’s way of presenting the facts and the different viewpoints of how history is presented in Russia to what really happened before he dives into the story from the various characters’ perspectives. Except for the second epilogue where he just went on his own philosophical discussion of history and religion that I didn't particularly enjoy. It’s interesting and engaging and makes me enjoy reading about the war even though I had to get though half the book to get to these beautiful insights.

            It’s funny but the largest frustration I have with this book is its epic size. I find it interesting, I enjoy the style it’s written in and although the numerous characters can sometimes be hard to keep track of (especially switching back and forth from Moscow to St. Petersburg to wartime to parties in the royal society to Tolstoy’s own history lessons) I like picking the book up. But when I look at how far I still have to go when I feel like I’ve been reading for a lifetime, I get distracted and frustrated. Maybe the quick pace of society now has transformed my attention span to make it hard to commit to such a long book or maybe it’s just hard sitting down and reading such a massive book. I did enjoy getting back into my school phase of highlighting and taking notes again though. So here are a few of the quotes that stood out to me that I’d like to share.

“One must be believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy!”

“If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.”

“We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness.”

There were a lot of insights into religion, the part of free will vs. inevitability that made me think and want to right a term paper. Questions posed that made we want to dash to the library and research the war, Tolstoy’s political views and why he wrote the book. The second epilogue bored me with Tolstoy’s ranting on historians and their own prejudices skewing the facts and misinterpreting the role the leaders such as Napoleon and Alexander had on the people of France and Russia. But being the uneducated person that I am when it comes to history I still enjoyed his take on looking at the "facts" in many different lights. He would explain what happened in a battle about how the French would consider it a failure and why, how the Russians considered it a success and why, and what the historians were now saying about it changing the way that it happened at that time. I really found his insight into how history changes over time fascinating. It reminded me of when I was reading McNamara's book when I was working on Last of the Boys and the confusion and lack of accurate data that made it difficult for the men in charge to make decisions. But then once they were in the war and saw that they had gotten themselves too deep into a problem that they could not easily get out of, there was no turning back. And Tolstoy talks about how these Russian generals made decisions, hundreds of orders sent out that never seemed to make it on time, or the plans were never able to be fulfilled because war is unpredictable and doesn't make sense. But then years and years go by and historians write about what happened and what it led to and forget about all the failed plans until history is presented as a succinct timeline of events culminating in war. It become inevitable and the "genius" of Napoleon becomes exaggerated until that this the only way we perceive these events. People look back and question "why didn't the leaders see this coming and plan accordingly?" and forget all the hundred of other things going on and the thousands of possibilities that could have resulted. And I found this insight refreshing. Sometimes we need that reminder that there is more than one way to look at things.