DICKENS VS TOLSTOY LIVE SHOW // WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy // 2021

hello everyone oh my goodness welcome to the third this is six welcome to the third uh dickens versus tolstoy debate we will continue war and peace by leo tolstoy we think this is probably the most anticipated debate i am so excited to say hello um oh my gosh thank you all so much for joining us we are so excited we're too excited honestly we're excited because so much what we want to say we have no clue how long this is going to be usually our debates are around two hours that's pretty long um which is pretty long so we will probably be doing our well yeah we will definitely be doing our non-spoiler section in the beginning of the debate or the live show and then we will probably be getting into spoilers because there is so much to talk about and there's so much that we want to go in detail with so obviously we'll have to be about spoilers um but yes emma do you have anything you want to say no no okay great i'm ready to go okay so the first few minutes we usually talk about our non-biased thoughts and ratings and then we go into the background of the book and the synopsis and then we describe how we're structuring the debate so usually how we do it is we do how the author's life and experience relate to the book and then the writing and then the characters and then the plot and structure of the actual book and then we will go more into um our favorite quotes and things like that um yeah and then we will go into the intent and why it was written favorite quotes and then we will pick at the end yeah dickens or tostoy for emma and i and you guys obviously have voted already as well um so that's how we're gonna do it and we're so excited so um do you want to talk about your unbiased minds yes okay yeah and then you can tell them why you have dickens uh questions okay um yeah completely unbiased thought since i am on toll story side this time my first tool start time anyway uh five stars it was so good like just i think reading this every day i was a little bit worried that because we did it from april to may that was like 22 pages a day i was like that's kind of a lot but like by the time it ended i was like oh oh no my heart is gone um it was just so good i think i'm not gonna say anything we're gonna talk about in the debate or anything but like i think this is actually like it is a life-changing book and i do feel like something has changed something is different um and besides i just learned so much because i didn't know very much about this time in history either and just like i think going from childhood boyhood youth to this thing who does that that's crazy ever yeah just so good like honestly so good so even though there were parts that i was like okay let's yeah pick it up yeah so okay um i completely agree with you completely agree and it was a five-star read if i could give every star in the galaxy to this book i would not even joking just because i feel like it transcends literature it transcends just the novel form in the book itself like it's it's something completely different and i just i just loved everything about it and i do have points that i want to question this i'm not so why i am dickens question mark is because i'm not really going to be so much comparing dickens and tolstoy i'm more going to be questioning what why tolstoy did something or like maybe if he could have done something a little bit differently kind of questioning why he did what he did sort of in favor of dickens but also just questioning them in general so i will be thinking more analytically not so much like die hard tolstoy fan um i mean i am a die-hard toaster fan come out anyway but you know what i mean um so yes i i loved literally everything about this book it was just incredible and as you guys know or if you don't know anna karenina anakuranina is my favorite book of all time and something that i want to talk about too is how they're so different because like i know we haven't read anika nina yet but um but yeah someone literally hey hey good morning you're reading my mind those carolyn like were in peace more than anna karenina that is a great question and i'm going to be talking about that more later on um but i am so excited um whoa it was a two-star read for you i would love to know why if you want to share your ratings and what you guys thought of the book whether you loved it whether you didn't um so yes okay before we babble on any longer i feel like we need to save all the time we have um okay so should i go into background on the book slash synopsis yes i have my journal out in front of me i'm just going to be reading from this because if i try to babble we're just going to have carolyn rambling for like five hours um i found this information on um on the internet as well as the introduction to the book in case you're wondering where i find the information for you know this this part of the debate so war and peace began as a novel under a different name the decemberists in 1863 he started to write a short novel about a political dissident returning from exile in siberia five years later he wrote a 1 300 page epic without a single exiled political dissident how could that be you may ask well it's a long story i'll try to keep it only 100 okay thank you okay here we go so tolstoy is an introspect um an introspective soul was born to a very eccentric aristocratic family in 1828 by the time he was 30 years old he had already dropped out of kazan university gambled away his family's fortune joined the army had written memoirs and rejected the literary establishment to travel europe he then came home to yasnaya polyana his ancestral mansion to write about the return of the decemberists a group of well-born revolutionaries pardoned in 1856 after 30 years in exile i am infatuated by the decemberists i think they are so interesting so i'm going to go into a little bit of detail about them just in case you don't know who the decemberists were the decemberists um in more detail they were made up of russian military officers and noblemen who were members of different anti-government secret societies and eventually organized the december's revolt in 1825. in total there were over 600 decemberists and their sympathizers they aimed at the abolishment of serfdom and and to overthrow the russian government and regime um they wanted to arrest the tsar and the royal family they created two main documents blueprints for the future political system which would serve as their foundation going forward excuse me the second document um i'm sorry with my pronunciation his constitution which declared russia as a constitutional monarchy with bizarre uh playing only a representative role any further plans were really vague as they were very doubtful about the fate of their revolt and had postponed it for years their ideas were inspired by the russian encyclopedists and by the american constitution the constitution written by the decemberists was essentially a rough translation of the united states constitution which i found really interesting they saw that the only way to execute their plans was to overthrow the monarchy on the morning of december 14th the december's officers raised three regiments to revolt against nicholas the first before it went um before it went dark nicholas finally um let's see um he finally started fighting them back hannan's and buckshot and they quickly dispersed they ran to the neva river where they tried to organize a military formation right on the ice many drowned because the cannonballs broke the ice in total 1 271 soldiers officers and civilians were killed that day but the number but the numbers were most likely higher in 15 days another revolt took place the revolt was suppressed by the royal forces on january third eighteen twenty six the investigation was thorough all members of the decemberists conspiracy were interrogated some of them by the emperor himself their statement including their explanation of their goals their critique of the government and their constitutional plans were recorded in several volumes nicholas later repeatedly referred to these materials during his rule he even ironically called the decemberists my friends of the 14th so even though the revolt didn't wasn't successful nicholas still referred it to what they thought would improve the government which i think is really interesting now he's actually taking what they had uh what their thoughts were into account um okay in total 121 noble men were condemned to different penalties and sentences five of the december's leaders were sentenced to death by hanging a shameful death for a nobleman which was performed in secret on july 13th 8-26 the different sentences included being stripped of nobility um lifelong hard labor demotion of office into officer into soldier exiled to serve in the caucuses exiled to live in siberia and others um and so i wrote in my journal like i can see why toaster would want to write about them like it's so fascinating um and i was talking to a lot of people in the discord about how we all wish that tolstoy did write um this sequel to east because warren is actually set before the events of the decemberists so i'm going to keep babbling i hope you don't mind no um it's great okay i'm learning so much so toaster began to wonder how he could tell the story of the decemberist's return from exile without telling the story of 1825 when they revolted against the conservative tsar nicholas the first and how could he do that without telling the story of 1812 when napoleon's disastrous invasion of russia helped us start the authoritarianism the decemberists were rebelling against and how could he tell the story of 1812 without talking about 1805 when the russians first learned about the threat napoleon posed after their defeat at the battle of australis so tulsa began writing about both the big um both the big events of history and the small lives that lived through those events he focused on the class he knew best aristocrats the story only occasionally touches on the lives of the vast majority of the russian population who were peasants or even serfs farmers bound to serve the owners of the land in which they lived the book opens on the eve of war between france and russia the highest of saint petersburg society was attended there um book one part one chapter two they worry about the looming violence but then then changed the conversation to money sex and death the topics aristocrats always seem to love this first scene is indicative of the way war and peace switches between the political and personal over and ever expanding canvas there are no main characters in war and peace instead tolstoy welcomed the reader into a best interlocking world of relationships and questions um will the luckless clumsy and illegitimate son of count bazooka four marry the beautiful and deceitful princess helene will his only true friend prince andre survive the battlefields of austria which of them will capture the heart of young naive and beautiful countess natasha rastova real historical figures also interweave with all the fictional characters napoleon appears several times and even one of fostoy's ancestors appears in the background which i found super interesting while the characters and their psychological development is gripping tolstoy is not afraid to interrupt the narrative to pose insightful questions about history why do wars start donations rise and fall on the actions of so-called great men like napoleon or are there larger cultural and economic forces at play what is the power that moves people what force moves the nations i'm talking too much already these extended digressions are a major part of what makes war and peace so panoramic in scope for some 19th century critics this meant that war and peace barely felt like a novel at all henry james called it the loose banking monster a large lucid baggy monster and tolstoy actually agreed in him novels were a western european form russian writers wrote differently because russian people lived differently tolstoy wrote about war and peace it is not a novel even less is it an epic poem and still less and historical chronicle in an assertive claim for the primacy of artistic form tulsa insisted that war and peace is what he wished and was able to express in the form in which it is expressed in essence the book is all of tolstoy's imaginative powers and nothing less i'm almost done i promise by the time war and peace ends tolstoy has brought his characters to the year 1820 36 years before the events he originally hoped to write about in trying to understand his own time he had become immersed in the years piled up behind him the result is a grand examination into history culture philosophy psychology and the human response to war i am done thank you wow applause for tolstoy like what to even say to that like that's why i had to write it all down is because it's just like so much to comprehend think about that's why i think this book like transcends everything is because it is like everything i know yeah yeah just like someone said the amount of research that tolstoy would have had to put into this is just like mind-blowing yeah like i don't think there's anything like i don't i can't think of anything like it today at least but exactly um yeah but yeah i wish he had written like more on the decembrus as well but i know yeah we have this when i also feel like that's what makes it so singular and so special is because like nothing is has ever or will ever be done like we're in peace you know like it's it stands not only in like it's in a genre of its own sort of like by itself yeah um okay oh my gosh um let me just see what everyone is saying um can we chat about it like we are not in class please yes we will we will i just wanted to give us a nice background so that we kind of understood because i feel like going into war and peace that's the thing about starting the way i definitely feel like people should either start with childhood wicked youth or anna karenina because you have to put in a lot of effort yeah this was a lot of peace you know it's not just like oh a light a light read um okay so um i did give kind of a synopsis on it's we're mainly following like the political and personal yeah there are so many characters that we do our three main characters are pierre bazoukov andre bokonski and natasha rostova so i feel like those we will highlight the most on yeah anyway okay so um i'm going to be talking about how the author's life and experience relate to the book please excuse more rambling i hope you guys don't mind okay um so what i find so interesting is that tolstoy was interested in his own history and to try and understand his own history he like took it apart and sort of questioned why things happened the way that they did and to understand the times that he lived in he looked back in history because as the common saying goes history repeats itself so to kind of understand his own day he looked to history um he was interested in war morality love family success death hate historical events and so much and more and he expressed that through his characters so war and peace is tolstoy in a sense like it's made up of everything that he is interested in yeah absolutely right um let's see his life in the army and what he saw and felt an experience is no doubt reflected in the soldiers in nikolai and andre and pierre and all of the men that experienced war and its effects um and i also want to just point out thank goodness for his wife sophia who very graciously transcribed 5 000 pages of drafts because war and peace went through many many many drafts and many different versions until finally gave us what we now have to read um so sofia round of applause for her um okay is there anything else that i want to talk about i feel like i feel like so much influence to his writing of the book so it's kind of hard to just pick apart a few but um just you know um okay so should we go into writing now yes okay the first thing i have in my notes underwriting is breathtaking in all capital letters why don't you go because i've been i've been back oh my gosh okay okay the first thing i have done for writing is like kind of what you've been talking about so it works well so kind of like um the way that it's structured when he's saying it's not a novel it's not this it's not 100 anything which i think its form is such a good kind of marriage to its content as well and like the philosophical topics that we'll probably discuss later when he's talking about war and peace and happiness and horror and necessity versus free will and stuff like that but because i think tolstoy didn't want it to be 100 fiction or 100 history or an essay although it's sometimes like it is all of those things um i think it like sets its goals in like the way that it's written and the kind of writing that it expresses to be able to set the reader up for another like kind of unconventional unconventional um and not so much traditional kind of break and also ideas because this whole book is also like tolstoy being so dissatisfied with history um not like history but the the academic field of history and the way that it's described the past um and so he's trying to break down kind of what historians and all different kind of historians have built up history to be and so like kind of he butters up the reader with like switching back and forth through all these unconventional kind of writing things that this like book book slash novel is um to kind of let you like fall a little bit into maybe a more unconventional mindset um to like embrace these like really complicated ideas by the time you get to the second epilogue um about history and about what it really means and is so like i just think it presents both like its form and content so brilliantly and like outlines those goals so connectedly and like yeah i was just like yes we love the parallel but i completely agree and i feel like the i think the thing that's the strongest about this is the incredible arc of it like yes yes how we start and how we end is so completely different and just it feels like you went through their actual lives it felt like a lifetime was captured in the pages and i think that that's why like and you said it beautifully before like you feel changed like completely changes your life as a mother because you live with the characters and they experience these incredibly groundbreaking yeah yeah changes and it's just like you can't not feel that way as well you can't not feel like your life is changing alone something that i wanted to quote um was something that tolstoy said um so he said time and my strength were flowing away with every hour and i knew that nobody would ever tell what i have to tell above all traditions both the form and content oppressed me i was afraid to write in a language different from that in which everybody writes i was afraid that my writing would fall into no existing genre neither novel nor tale nor epic yeah he's right um but what i loved was how he said i knew that nobody would ever tell what i have to tell it's so true and it's what we said before like no one will and no one has been able to write like tolstoy no one has been something like war and peace um yeah something else that i wanted to talk about was something that virginia woolf said and this is part of the introduction um it says if you think of the novels which seem to you great novels you think of all sorts of things of religion of love of war of peace of family life of balls and country towns of sunsets moon rises the immortality of the soul that um there is hardly any subject of human experience that is left out of war and peace this same monumental and comprehensively detailed quality of war and peace has inspired characterizations of the masterpiece as the great book of life even life itself yeah yeah i just love it because even um oh it's on the back of the book um isaac babel he says if the world the world could write itself it would write like tolstoy or if life could write it would write like tolstoy and it's so true because tolstoy captures life in the grand scope but also in the minute details yeah i know um that's actually good because like i know it's so hard to talk about this book because it's such like a grand extreme scope but i think one of the coolest things like just talking about writing still was like his nature writing and stuff and i think that like those scenes i have like a little bit of a point to make about it um like just show you how much he packs into like seemingly small things but like for example his kind of naturalistic um figuring of like the militaristic movement and the army and stuff like that just to like go on to show later those two points as well but like um kind of in conjunction with tolstoy's rejection that like he says history finds its cause in one or two great men or a set of ideals or something like that in many seats he like takes the opportunity to describe either the army or soldiers as like waves or a forest and stuff like that so like when napoleon invades russia for example tolstoy is like why what force causes to move um but then because he's described it so naturally like i don't think for example when it rains like do we ask ourselves why is it raining or like what caused each raindrop to fall kind of thing or what caused the wind to blow or what was like the first moment in this chain of events that allowed like the first snowflake to fall or something um so i think he's like if we accept nature and all this phenomenon is like very naturally occurring extremely complicated interconnected system of science that's 100 governed by like laws that we know and we can trace he kind of wants that same acceptance in his philosophy i think of history just like don't presume that like napoleon or one or two people did this like history is like i don't know history is like rain um but it's just like when he describes i think in book one he said that prince nesvitsky saw the rapid noisy little waves of the ends looking on the bridge he saw equally uniformed living waves of soldiers or a man a fleck of white foam on the waves of the ends in the darkness it seems as though a gloomy unseen river was flowing always in one direction humming with whispers um yeah i don't know and then so many times for characters yeah identify themselves with nature especially pierre um and stuff like that and i think just like that naturalistic pairing of like the military and stuff like that and of human history and stuff he wants like that same like law to be found in history as in like nature and stuff like that which is ah it's just so good and then we get such beautiful like writing out of some of the most horrifying scenes as well i think yeah and i i feel like it's just part of who tolstoy is like that yeah like connecting nature to emotional um the emotional causes of change or something um someone just mentioned one of my favorite scenes so i just got it uh yeah the oak tree oh my god we will get to the oak tree i have a whole little spiel that i want to say about that one um but no you're completely right and i also feel like he addresses the machinery of the map and he often uses a lot of words that are really effective and he repeats a lot of words the way that he uses repetition and symbolism and metaphor is just like drives his point like so deeply into into the reader and i think it's so beautiful okay let's see do you want to talk about because i think that this is really interesting yeah the theatricality um yes of the book because i have it's um it's referred in the introduction it says theater and theatrical moments are highly significant in war and peace both in the war sequences and in the p sequences um which i want to just find that page because it goes on and i think that it's really oh yeah special okay um the sense that the characters of war and peace with great and small act and move as if connected by threads of destiny is just below the surface of this work of art as it restlessly questions ideas of free will fate and providence each of tolstoy's major characters at some point observe life as if it were theater each one at significant points in his or her journey senses that he or she is playing a role that things could be otherwise that what happens is things could not be otherwise that what happens is somehow scripted or inevitable and it gives some examples that are spoilers so i won't go into that but there are certain points where um and it's i have an example uh on book three part two chapter one page seven hundred and thirty two hour edition um the actors of 1812 have long since left the stage their personal interests have vanished leaving no trace and nothing remains of that time but it's historical results so addressing right like addressing the people as actors and as a performance and how it through that when we learn about history we learn about the historical results the events that occurred and the major the major literary figures but what is left is the people that actually inhabit those events yeah yeah that he writes that is just like so so good because we do you know he gives us what history doesn't give us exactly yeah um yeah i feel like that's one of the reasons he wanted to like write the book as well but like to show the war and so many times he calls it like a for a farce and a senseless crime like a spectacle a stage production and stuff like that and then like you said he kind of describes the soldiers as actors um who are kind of following the like commands of their commanders and stuff but i think like when you get sorry i just keep bringing up the apple blog but it's such a good place going from like a small kind of theater production kind of take on it to um like huge big implications that make you like kind of stare at your i just had so many like existential moments yeah um because like not only is he condemning war like time and time again um like through that comparison but he's trying to promote i think humanity's acknowledgement of those forces that he keeps talking about that were under the laws um somewhat of inevitability and freedom because like one of the first images i think we get of the french army is described um like we're at a theater like the reader is at a theater and it says the curtain of smoke began to move from left to right as if drawn by an invisible hand and then later on he also describes the battlefield as an amphitheater um so i think like he does show like the clothes and the costumes and like the playthings of war um but then like as we keep reading and we kind of like sink deeper like we start to realize that i think the reader is a lot as well like the soldiers in this like production and this farce than we probably would have thought when we first started reading it because the epilogue um is saying that like oh you don't have as much control as you think you do but you also don't have as much free will as you think you do and so all of these like costumes and stuff like that like the reader i think realizes that we're also we're also in those costumes um and our lives are so governed um essentially in some sort of uniform as the first that he's setting up and i'm just like ah yeah so yeah something else that i love is how he like molds the the grand with the small especially in those sequences because like we'll get you know the introduction to the war scene but then he'll talk about like the officer snoring or you know the smell of the scene or the way that the men feel and i think like he gives us such big things but he also pairs it with the small and i think that that's what makes it so like affecting as a reader is because we aren't just given you know just what happened he doesn't just tell us what happens he shows us and he puts us into the mind and heart of of the men and people that inhabit his books but also just the soldiers themselves dealing with um let's just see um someone mentioned yeah um natasha at the at the opera with anatole i don't know if we want to go into spoilers yet but that has something to do with like theater and symbolism um let me just see oh okay um so i have a quote it is from part 1 chapter 24 page 109 um he andre was also convinced that there were no political difficulties in europe and no real war but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing pretend to do something real so the use of the words puppet show pretending and real i think really show that andre as well as tolstoy like see the falsity of things but also the theatricality of things kind of addressing the fact that these were historical events but in the book you know obviously they're made up of fictional people yeah he's you know obviously making them go through what what they have to go through um so i just loved that i also feel like tolstoy is constantly asking usually through andre these huge questions of like why are false and like are we playing pretend and um it's something that he does to the entirety of war and peace and by writing the characters a certain way he addresses these concerns and brings that attention to the reader um so i feel like something that i want to talk about as well is how when he speaks to us directly as the narrator as opposed to when he speaks to us indirectly through the chapters because yeah like that's something that can be a bit not redundant but like i was talking to someone i forget who but they were saying that he expresses a lot of things beautifully through the characters and then he talks about them again directly as himself to the reader and is that necessary you know because i feel like it can kind of depend like sometimes i felt like we got it through the experiences of the characters so that's something that i could see is like he's putting um so much emphasis on something so he really wants to bring your attention to it but he was doing so through the characters yeah yeah something to think about um okay i have a little quote to uh bring in charles dickens here okay introduction and it says some critics charge tolstoy with the standard accusation leveled at charles dickens and other 19th century novelists who were considered to spin out words irresponsibly in order to fill up installments we know that to the contrary tolstoy cut down his novel and discarded hundreds of pages of drafts including complete episodes in which for example pierre adopts and travels with an orphan and saves the life of a young italian count so i think that that's really funny is that you know tulsa wrote so much but we don't even get a lot of what he wrote and like i said it went through so many drafts and i think even though this book is huge and you can kind of like question like did it have to be that big but it cut he cut down so much that it's interesting to see what he left because like then we know what he left has so much gravity and there's like every word serves a purpose which i always say about anna karenina as well is that i wouldn't take a single punctuation mark out of anna karenina and i don't know if i feel the same way about war and peace just because like i said some parts could be redundant whereas this is thought through the characters so does he need to address us directly as the narrator yeah not really not much but and something that i want to talk about is how tolstoy knows exactly how to make the reader feel and when to make them feel that specific feeling because i feel like the whole time i was reading that book i was thinking like ulster why are you doing this to me like i know what you're doing and you're doing a very good job at it you know like i i see you manipulating me to feel a certain way and to think a certain way and i love it and i was making a joke while reading um that i'm gonna need therapy or like therapists like what brings you here today and then me it's just like close to it because i felt like everything that the characters went through like i felt and like natasha is going through her really great struggle you your struggle and you feel that it's like so emotive and it's just like it's just incredible it's just incredible um let me just see what you guys are saying [Music] okay so yes um i think i'd rather read the scenes with pierre that were cut rather than rambling about history and that's true i do feel like sometimes it would serve a greater purpose to show us what he is telling us through the characters instead of telling us yeah yeah like that comment i think insecurity um i kind of get that like i feel like there wasn't a lot of maybe trust implicit in his like because like if you just leave us with the story i think well you know we got it we'll get it but i have like the same essay honestly and worded like minutely differently three or four times i think was a bit much um sure but i still liked i still liked it but much yeah yeah yeah um okay sorry just let me see what everybody's saying okay this is interesting so um i don't think that the book is um is the final draft he wanted to continually polish it but it ate up his best years that's so interesting and i can definitely see that because i read a quote somewhere i forget where but it was saying that tolstoy i think was more proud of anna karenina than he was of war in peace because like he considered anna karenina his first like major novel and he was very proud of it whereas he felt war and peace was a bit not like floundering but i guess um not done in a sense not his final draft so i can i think that that's really interesting a lot of people are saying that they wish that they could read the parts that were cut out i feel the same way um yeah yeah let's just oh my gosh um okay speaking about writing just in like a general sense yeah i just feel like like no one writes like him like do you agree i don't know i feel like when i read a tolstoy even though it's translated from russian like i know it's tolstoy and i can like i can feel it does that make any sense to you a little bit yes okay i'm supposed to be on tools why are we switching sorry sorry i'm talking about about tolstoy um no i can feel that and especially like in the scenes where like it is so memorable and like it i don't like i think i don't know maybe you do cry a lot at books yes oh yeah okay but like this one i don't really like sometimes i do but this one like i broke down several times um and i think like in especially in the historical things like i know exactly what you mean like i can tell that's tolstoy talking like he has a very like distinct voice and he wants to tell you things um but like he has so many different voices as well i think in this book which is so interesting and like some of them are stronger than others and some of them are stronger than others at certain points in the book um but yeah i think they're all like it's just so cool how we can switch around between those different voices and those different styles in one book and for it not to feel super jarring um because i don't think it was that jarring switching from like a narrative to his essays kind of thing exactly yeah yeah and that kind of is a great tangent into characters um yeah so i think that this is going to be where we hit spoilers but not yet i will tell you when we're gonna yeah um but just in the general sense i have written down in my notes but all the characters were so incredibly distinct that even though one man is writing all these people 600 plus people of all different stations classes um genders and sexes and um positions in society and it's you know difference in experience they're all so distinct and they felt so real and it didn't feel like they were fictional like he writes them in a way that they all feel so believable um and he knows just exactly how to write from each person's point of view so it's not like we're getting a first person point of view where it's just one person we have this 600 plus ensemble cast of characters and i love how he chose an omniscient narrator that could go into the headspace of whatever character it highly highlighted on because he gives us so much and yeah it was just like incredible how i didn't feel like i preferred one character's point of view over another like every time he changed the point of view what do you feel differently yeah okay okay every time he changed the character's point of view it felt seamless to me and it just yeah we'll always compare reading toe straight this is so like not professional at all not scholarly but i compare it to love actually because the way that have you ever seen the movie love actually okay love actually is basically like following a bunch of different people but all their lives interweave but we get each of their perspectives and it's like the same real pearl story yeah it all kind of moves fluidly and it feels really natural and beautiful um yes yes i have okay this isn't spoilers so don't worry okay um but i have one like point it's a pretty lengthy point so give me like three minutes here but it's about andre but also it's about how like like we're talking about the kind of narrative and those characters and then the more like non-fiction essay philosophical word the topic is history but then like if i had to argue for tolstoy and if i had to be like hey vote for telstra vote for toast which i am um i think i would say that they're like actually the same thing um both those parts okay and i'm gonna talk a little bit about andre because i think he's showing for me like the best example of those two seemingly separate things actually being one thing i definitely want to talk to you about andre versus pierre yeah like people are either one or the other yeah so i just i yeah we should talk about that okay okay okay so okay so all the characters together in one piece like we're saying and each person alone because he does take time to showcase you individuals um everyone and everything showcases tolstoy's theory of the force that produces events in that it is the resultant of a multiplicity of variously directed forces the interaction of many persons connected with the event um and so andre i think was the best example for me of that theory no we're not hitting spoilers don't worry we may never know the cause of anything far less in cases when we're certain we know the causes of war and revolution um as he accuses other historians of so he moves from like this hypothesis that people combine in a certain formation to produce actions and then he moves to the level of the individual in the epilogue you know when he finally breaks down to individual characters so we go from like all of the characters in war and peace and everyone in history everywhere and then we kind of shrink down to the small level of in this case andre but from going from this infinity of everyone we don't actually get smaller when we go down to one person we encounter infinity on both sides um because tulsi asks in the realm of a singular person how much of their life and consequently their actions is based either on free will or inevitability um and so much of warm peace is about our characters perceived like oh i'm free i'm doing what i want these are like my actions um well tolstoy takes every opportunity in the narrative and in those philosophical times to show the reader how much sway their free will suffers from causes they'll never be able to know um andre i think from the first time he comes on the scene he's constantly constrained he's complaining about how trapped he is in society life in the first scene he's introduced he confesses to pierre that he's a chain convict he's tied up um he can't escape from these enchanted circles that he lives his life in um and then in the epilogue i'm going to tie these two things together from tulsa concludes for us that there is neither complete freedom nor a complete inevitability but one of his conditions of partial freedom um embodies andre's epiphany of peace because um andre in the sky andre in the sky they have a thing andre in the sky are very much the same thing um because when he lays dying he's like above him there is nothing but the sky the lofty sky how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky all is vanity all falsehood except that infinite sky um so and then in the in the epilogue toll stories like however we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space in which man is situated that knowledge can never be complete for the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of space so then when you get to the epilogue like andre and his sky they just become like completely kind of decoded and i think it's such a natural progression of like the unveiling of a symbol because tolstoy identifies like spatial infinity which is andre's like infinite sky that is the spatial infinity which is like his staple symbol um as one of the only ways to avoid complete inevitability and for a certain measure of freedom to remain so like when andre is then looking up at the sky which is like the narrative it is still like that non-fiction philosophical thing because he's looking at freedom and he's looking at the lack of inevitability when he looks up um and i think that's one of the main reasons that he's drawn to natasha as well because one of those first scenes is when she's looking out of her window and she wants to fly away into the sky um it was just oh my god so they're the same thing it's just the same thing even though like he takes on a different voice and it's it's expressed differently but it's just um and also i want to talk about how even was that before hold on i have it in my notes really quick yeah um okay where is it i have so much written down that i'm like what am i looking for okay the lofty sky page uh here we go so many tabs it's a bit ridiculous i know i know there's too many um okay so from page from chapter 17 of book one part three yeah um is it spoilers there's still no um i'm gonna try and for it to not um okay um how differently do those clouds glide across the lofty infinite sky um how is it i did not see that lofty sky before and how happy i am to have found it at last yes all is vanity all falsehood except that infinite sky there is nothing nothing but that um but even it does not exist there is nothing but quiet and peace and then it goes into him um finding the oak tree yeah i think is like one of the most beautiful parts of symbolism in that entire book is because like to to not like babble on super long just like explain it a little bit um so like obviously andre sees um andre sees this like gnarled and yeah kind of dead looking oak tree and he sort of sees himself in it and then oh i feel like okay i feel like we should go into spoilers now because this is hard to not spoil it okay up to you go for it i don't know um let me let me find my brother-in-law is saying hello hi steve nice to meep um okay hold on wait one sec um okay andre in the oak tree 449 okay okay um oh yes yes yes is this spoilers or is this not spoilers i mean he's just looking at a tree yeah i don't think it's yeah basically like what he had gone through affects him emotionally and he sees himself emotionally in this oak tree um okay let's see uh let me just find where it begins i think it's at the top of 500 uh 449. well 449 is disparaging the tree i opened up at the wrong page there we go okay um only the dead looking evergreen furs dotted about in the forest and this oak refused to yield to the charm of spring or nothing either the spring or the sunshine spring love happiness this oak seemed to say are you not wary of that stupid meaningless constantly repeated fraud always the same and always a fraud there's no spring no sun no happiness look at those cramped dead furs ever the same and to me too sticking out my broken and barked fingers just where they have grown whether from my back or my side as they have grown so i stand and i do not believe in your hopes and your lies oh my god um okay and then it continues on under the oak two were flowers and grass but it stood among them scowling rigid misshapen and grim as ever and i feel like that is beautiful symbolism of andre in society as well in comparison to his his uh wife lise who i feel like she is kind of like this this flower of a person and he is this like gnarled oak tree um yes the oak is right a thousand times right thought prince andre let others the young yield afresh to that fraud but we know life our life is finished so he thinks that everything is done he's come to his end life can't give him anything else um a whole sequence of new thoughts hopeless but more in fully pleasant arose in his soul in connection with that tree during this journey he as it were considered his life afresh and arrived at this old conclusion restless in its hopelessness that it was not for him to begin anything anew but that he was live without his life content to do no harm and not disturbing himself or desiring anything um so he's basically just like completely distraught seeing himself in this dead oak tree and then it is only after meeting natasha and then we have the window scene with the moon and her reaching out into the sky um let's see where is i have it written down which one natasha uh i think it's 452. oh yeah oh okay perfect um so he goes back to that same yeah and he says yes here in this forest was that oak with which i agreed thought prince andre but where is it he asked wondering gazing at the left side of the road and without recognizing it he looked with animation at the very oak he sought the old oak quite transfigured spreading out a canopy of sappy dark green foliage would be wrapped in slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun neither gnarled fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now through the hard century-old bark even where there were no twigs leaves had sprouted such as one that could hardly believe the old veteran could have produced i love that he called it an old veteran because i feel like he gives it much such a life that he sort of sees himself yeah obviously through the oak yes it is the same oak thought prince andre i know he was seized by the unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal all the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory um i don't want to go into spoilers uh no life is not over at 31 prince andre suddenly decided finally and decisively it is not enough for me to know what i have in me everyone must know it here that young girl who wanted to fly away into the sky everyone must know me so that my life may not be lived for myself alone while others lie while others live so apart from it but so that it may reflect in them all and they and i may live in harmony oh it's like it's just the greatest development because he comes from not wanting to be around anyone to to appreciating his life into wanting to be to wanting to live in harmony with everyone it's just gorgeous yeah i know you know um okay i have kind of one of the same like that development but it is a little bit of a spoiler so maybe maybe we can go into spoilers okay okay spoilers spoilers okay um so like yeah that development is so good but as well like i think his characters all of them they're in this constant state of flux but like just andre again and pierre to an extent like they have these epiphanies like andre dying on the battlefield he's like oh i love life and then he gets back and he's like no i hate life and then he sees natasha in this tree and he's like ah i love life again and then he proposes to natasha spoiler and then um he's like oh wait this kind of sucks and then he goes back to the war and stuff and he has another epiphany so i think like it's just so frustrating to see them like know these things but then forget them but i think more than that like it's just so real because like in real life we don't always like we don't carry on these like super moralistic super um amazing kind of fairy tale ask lessons that we've learned because our lives are so dimmed by time and we forget so many things but like in the book it just makes it so much more like invest in an investment in you when you see them not um able to hold on to the things that they've learned and then i think just to bring up dickens in this point i think in the dickens novels we've read so far it's much more common for what people have learned to be maintained throughout the whole book like if they have an epiphany or if they learn something to me it seems like they maintain it and they carry it with them and it's like this fairy tale kind of ending to an extent for example pickwick who goes from being good and he's just good his benevolence never decreases um and he just maintains that throughout the whole book which isn't i think super indicative of life either um whereas andre and pierre like they take on and they cast off again and then they take it on again um and life is just like the constant repetition of having to relearn stuff you thought you already knew and relearn feelings that you thought you had already felt um or thought you would never feel again and stuff like that and it's just like yeah i feel like there's a lot of truth in that because like throughout life in general i think that you know we learn from what we experience but also sometimes we have to be reminded of the things that we learn and to remember who we are and what we want and sort of the the smallness of ourselves because i feel like with this grand scope of a world in warriors you know like being that one person and i think why andre feels so connected to the lofty sky and like for me i have a really strong connection to the night sky and the stars because like that's when i look up at the sky i have my andre moment where i think that i'm so small and i'm so my new and the things that i experience are not that big as big as they feel in my heart and i think that that's exactly what andre is feeling so yeah yeah he's just like i think that's why i love andre so much and i know that it's very controversial because a lot of people are like pierre is so much better andre is so like cold and distant and rude and i feel like why i love andre is because he's so complex and he one he he asks questions he wants to know why things are the way that they are he wants to know what makes things happen and he he like dives into his feelings and he isn't one-dimensional i think that the fact that he goes through so many emotional changes makes him so real and so true and so deep and i feel like with pierre ark character arc is mainly circumstantial where i feel like he goes from an illegitimate yeah you know or illegitimate son to this you know husband of natasha who has wealth who has land who has a whole family so his is more circumstantial where i feel like his his emotions can you hear that a little bit okay his emotions are a little more linear where i feel like andre's emotions are ever changing do you get that feeling as well yeah i feel i i feel like pierre is in the same ever changing like it is circumstantial and stuff but i think he still has like inside himself the same um yeah lessons but i always feel like there's goodness in pierre and that always drives him yeah as like sometimes the goodness in andre is a little hidden you know true so something else that i want to talk about that someone else mentioned was um when andre and pierre are on the ferry boat oh you know that i love that scene and i love how andre and pierre whenever they have scenes together it's always these really big moments where they're like questioning why things happen the way that they happen they're questioning religion they're questioning um life in general and and andre goes through you know all only wanting glory and not wanting um he only wants to live like for himself too yeah hearing about glory and wanting the solitude of his to wanting love and then you know pierre obviously is master you know master manipulated by everyone because and there's actually a quote that i put in my notes that i want to talk about um hold on andre where are you oh pierre not andre okay um sorry okay so it's maria writes to julie karagina of media fighting fortune in book one part one chapter 22 page 101 i cannot agree with you about pierre so young and burdened with such riches to what temptations he will be exposed this is in this is on page 101 so he's already foreshadowing the impending temptations that pierre is going to face which i think kind of sets up the reader to sort of expect here to be confronted by these things um and then um the insincerity of everybody around pierre is really shown in book 1 part 3 chapter 1 page 215 where there's a quote it says it seemed so natural to pierre that everyone should like him and he sort of because he doesn't fit in especially in the beginning of the book where it's really evident that um anna pavlovna is sort of nerve uh unnerved by him um yeah for him um by how he doesn't fit in and because he was educated abroad and he has lofty ideas um it shows how distinct of a character he is and how he really stands out among everybody else and also pierre um like levin is another version of tolstoy um which i think is really uh interesting to sort of try and yeah the hidden aspects of tolstoy's own person yeah um something i want to talk about as well is the friendship or bromance between andre and pierre because i just think it's it's so beautiful um let's see yeah someone said i love how andre is always wanting to distance himself from pierre but gets pulled back into loving him do they talk there's a quote um yes um there's this quote that said um it was talking about lee's andre's wife and how she didn't fit in to the family that pierre was almost a member and talking about the balconies and i think that that's just like so beautiful because expressing pierre as a family member of the balkans not even a friend yeah okay i think it's in andre's part i just like separated them by character in my notes oh yeah and someone just asked if we're reading anna we're reading on july and august yes oh my goodness okay so it's talking about on so what i did for each character is how i broke down my notes as i broke it down by character and then i talked about how they're introduced because i think the way that tolstoy introduces each character is incredible and it really serves a purpose like he he describes him in a very particular way um so andre's introduction is book one part one chapter three page fifteen just then another visitor entered the drawing room prince andre bulkonsky the little princess's husband so he's first addressed not only as the son of count wilkonsky or prince nikolai but as the husband of prince princess which i think kind of shows everybody's perception of him he isn't really himself he is a husband um it was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room but found them to be so tedious and none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife and then it goes on and it also says later on prince andre screwed up his eyes and turned away pierre who from the moment prince andre entered um wanted to go up to him meet him and then on to page 16 but when he saw pierre's beaming face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile so it shows that even though we have this hard man yeah he's hard because of the falsity of the people he's around yeah and he knows and sees the truth of pierre and how pierre doesn't fit in but he loves that pier doesn't fit in and he is tired of the falsity and he sees the truth in pierre and that's when he can show the joy that he feels when he's around that truth yeah oh my god i love them i know me too i love them so much like together like i love when they have scenes together um there's also another part okay one of my favorite one of my favorite scenes is on page 26 and 27 in the same part if no one fought except on his own convictions there would be no wars he said and that would be splendid said pierre since andre smiles ironically very likely it would be splendid but it will never come about well why are you going to war ask pierre what for i don't know i must besides that i am going he paused i am going because the life i am leading here does not suit me and so it like beautifully shows like andre confesses that he's not happy in the position that he's in he's not happy with his life and it's only two pierre that he feels comfortable to confess that to um so i just love how when they have these big moments it's always when they're talking with one another even before andre's death um he he has that very great um meet with pierre when pierre goes to battle and yeah but they always have these great emotional changes together and i just yeah i agree okay let's talk about who did you prefer reading about andre or pierre can you pick is or is that like too hot i don't uh i think i think at the beginning it was definitely andre but then at the end is probably pierre like not um not okay before anyone dies like split the book into half before anyone dies um yeah i think at the beginning it was andre and then at the end when andre is still alive pierre i would say yeah um oh yeah everyone please say who um pierre andre annoyed me yeah yeah i can definitely see that maybe pierre and carolyn is out here asking real questions hey i wanna know i wanna know um yeah i find that really interesting and then we'll talk about natasha as well but i feel like we're we're going on with uh pierre and andre um sometimes piers decisions were so random and it made it feel like such a roller coaster i can definitely agree with that i did feel like sometimes especially in the beginning yeah this pierre is very naive in a sense yes his decisions are a little like people like why are you doing that or i was questioning him more whereas with andre i sort of really valued how he valued everyone else so yeah i think striving for truth um sonia wow we have uh as well um together they are magical i think that that's i completely agree um okay let's see oh hello lucy even though i don't exactly like andre as a person i loved watching his development 110 um pierre was like a lost puppy he was indeed i completely agree let's see okay together they definitely have the best conversations um okay um i just want to make sure that i'm not forgetting anything because like there's something that we can talk about you know that like i don't oh something that i want to talk about with andre is how i was blown away by when he is wounded and the person that saves his life is napoleon i read that scene and i was like napoleon just saved andre's life because if he wasn't there like not really saved his life but i guess prolonged it in a sense because if he wasn't there he would have bled out if someone else didn't come to save him so it was just like absolutely blown away about that i just feel like there's so much significance in it um okay let me just see oh okay one of my favorite scenes one of my favorite quotes is page 500 we have to talk about it i'm just gonna i'm just gonna read it okay wait 500 and why just 500. oh yeah his soul was as fresh and joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into god's own fresh air it did not enter his head that he was in love with natasha he was not thinking about her but only picturing her to himself and in consequence all life appeared in a new light why do i strive why do i toil in this narrow confined frame when life all life with all its joy is open to me and uh said himself and for the first time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future he decided that he must attend to his son's education by finding a tutor and putting the boy in his charge then he ought to retire from the service and go abroad and see england switzerland and italy i must use my freedom while i feel so much strength and youth in me he said to himself pierre was right when he said he must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy and now i do believe in it here's my favorite quote but dead bury their dead but while there is life we must live and be happy thought he and that is why i love andre so much like i just read that and my mind was blown so it's just so good i don't know it's insane it's just absolutely insane um i wrote margins of my book my my ridiculous annotations yes thank you tolstoy for giving andre one of the best lines in all of literature because like it's just so profound like instead of worrying about you know life and death like let's just live like you have life live and i feel good that's something that tolstoy repeats a lot in the books is talking about the comparison between life and death and living and dying yeah which i think is like two of the most powerful themes of the book yes how life and death affect the characters um do you have any parts that you want to bring i have like kind of something related to that but it's like it's not really character it's honestly more like plot so i mean i'm not gonna go in between it's fine ah um yeah okay you were saying that like yeah like live and be happy and so much of it like the major theme is you know death and life and happiness and stuff like that but also one of my favorite things i ended up like devoting a whole tab to it um was like war and peace but also like war in peace and peace and war and like why like what is he saying with that because when i went into work war and peace i was expecting like war and peace not so much like a very cut and dry distinction between the two yeah or more like just kind of um like in peace scenes he uses extremely militaristic language and like the kind of language i was expecting from like a battlefield or stuff like that but then when we are on the battlefield it's so natural and he's using so much beautiful imagery and stuff like that um so it's more like there is definitely you know real war here there's the napoleonic wars and there are scenes of peace but it's also tolstoy i think like discovering a lot of the like battles that people wage within themselves and like we were talking about with andre um and his conflict in society and natasha even with anatole and that whole episode and maybe sonia i think um sonya embellishes it and embodies it i think most sadly like her life is peaceful in comparison to what is going on outside of where she's living and stuff like that but her inner life is just like anguish and sadness and grief and she i think gets the worst um the worst straw in the book um and those were so saddening times i think but also like when he's talking about during times um of peace how horrible things can be but also in times of war how much tranquility people can find because um i think he's trying to be like oh there's no absolute and like pierre this is like one of piers epiphanes as well and he's like there's no absolute horror there's no absolute happiness in the world um just so there's no absolute free will and there's no absolute necessity um because pierre says that there is nothing in the world that is terrible suffering and freedom have their limits and those limits are very close together um so i'm going to talk about like when he describes you know anna pavlovna as like a military commander in the drawing room or he characterizes pierre's inward struggle to marry helene as crossing a line that's reminiscent of kind of no man's land and stuff like that um but then we have andre who's like dying and bleeding out and then he has his thing with the sky um or nikolai who's like oh my gosh i don't want to go back home life here is so peaceful in the regiment and it's so calm and orderly um so it's like appreciating like both like you said but also i think like when one pier says that peace and inner harmony are only found through the horror of death as well it's just like uh it's just so both it's like both of everything this book is like two things all the time and i think that's such a good like balance and i think maybe a lot of other authors and especially like through their characters would have maybe tried to enforce one side or the other but tolstoy kind of enforces always this like middle ground and appreciation of like both things in both things that seemingly and can't come together yeah yeah i also felt like um let's see yeah like i was thinking about how even in the peace scenes there isn't complete peace like there's always the war is always present and i think just as in the military where everyone has their state position so does everyone else in peace and society everyone holds a role same thing with kind of like the theatrical aspect of like all of them know that they're playing a role even if it's not a fictional role it's a role in society it's a role in the military so i feel like we can kind of see that in war and peace yeah yeah because you know even with the when the book opens we are technically in a peace scene um at anna but they're talking about the war they're talking about the military and that's the first thing that they discuss and then they go into you know the sex lives of everyone else and who's you know with who and um and the personal but the political is the first thing that we confront in the in the drawing room yeah because it's it's always present yeah yeah do you wanna i was gonna say people were talking about helene do you want to talk about helene a little bit um i have her introduction written down because i think again it's really interesting so she is introduced in chapter three on page 12. she rose with the same unchanging smile with which she had first entered the room the smile of a perfectly beautiful woman so they're establishing her beauty and i think helene is one of those morally ambiguous people where she's not terribly bad but she's not like she's not obviously good um and is she is she a villain like is she an antagonist um i saw someone say that no one hates helene as much as pierre and i definitely agree with that um and also she knows that her beauty is her power that's what she uses um over everyone and then um in the book one part three chapter two they compare her to helen of troy with his plain face pierre um to he uh to be looked on as a sort of paris possess uh possessed of a helen which i found really interesting because it's like is that why tolstoy named her helene um because she is kind of this helen of troy character um and then on page 492 there is this incredible metaphor that i loved um talking about natasha in comparison to uh helene her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful compared to her lanes her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped but helene seemed as it were hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had scanned her person while natasha was like a girl exposed for the first time who would have felt very much ashamed had she not been uh assured that this was absolutely necessary so when they describe her as a painting heavily varnished by everyone's looks yeah was i was just like blown away by that um i'm kind of talking about natasha being exposed for the first time she's sort of losing her innocence in a sense of being brought into society um yeah and then kind of going sort of jumping away ahead now let me where did i put it sorry finding it in my nose um okay in the epilogue on page 1245 let me just get this here we go okay sorry so many tabs they really aren't that helpful um this is in the epilogue part 1 chapter 10 there were then as there are now conversations and discussions about women's rights the relation of husband and wife and their freedom and rights though these themes were not yet termed questions as they are now but these topics were not merely understanding uh uninteresting to natasha she positively did not understand them so i love because people are talking about men writing women women's rights like something that's uh that i really appreciate is how he's addressing the now and the change of history too now even though when he's writing this is history for us and so much has changed from the now that he is discussing and the now that we live in he's talking about how natasha didn't even understand the concept of women's rights and how even though some women at that time probably wanted wanted those rights i loved how he addressed that because i feel like he writes women really well even though you can't like i i feel very like differing about this because at some points i do feel like he could give more characters yeah um but he also does know how to how to write from their perspective so talking about sonia for example yeah sonia is first introduced as the niece she's not even introduced as anything else um because that's kind of showing her position in the family and in society so i feel like he knows exactly how to express um a person's position uh someone is that he did sonia bad he did but i oh uh justice for tanya but i do feel like there's a purpose in that yeah and i feel like because sonia grew up putting everyone before herself and even in when she was introduced let me get to sonia [Music] um okay he describes sonya uh sonia the niece sonia was a slender little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes blah blah blah um and then it goes into she was watching nikolai with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant impose upon anyone so even her smiles can't impose upon anyone like she is so self-sacrificing even from the first sentence of her being described um which i feel like perfectly shows her position so the first thing we learned about her is that her position in the family and in society um then her beauty is expressed and then her girlish adoration for nikolai which i think is her two main aspects of her character is her position and and how one completely affects the other um a great example of this is when sonia is questioning to write to nikolai and oh yeah um i don't know i think if he writes i will write too so like i feel like that's pretty relatable like i think that in relationships there is that question of like do i text them first or did they text me or when do i text back like even though it's so different in technology technological terms you're still asking that same question and i also think it shows perfectly how sonja unlike natasha like if natasha was in that position would she ask that same question like do i i'm which i feel like she i feel like she would in a sense because she does wait for andre to call on her yeah um so yeah i mean i loved following sonia but at times i did wish that she wasn't so um easily uh walked over like i kind of put her to sort of stick up for herself and and even though she's in a really hard position um which i the countess like i was so angry with the countess kind of like yeah telling her he has to marry maria because we need we need the money and i mean on another sense like i was really happy that nikolai ended up with maria because i do i loved maria's character so i don't i don't know what are your thoughts i don't know like i just think like uh i think lucy oh no my eyeballs um yeah that it was a little bit disappointing how sonia maria were like determined by their self-sacrificing attitudes a little bit and like i did like following them and like i think um comparing that a little bit to like the war and the peace and the peace and the war like that self-sacrifice um i think there's like a little bit of the parallel that people like obviously not literally or anything like that but um i think like maybe nikolai or andre experiences on the battlefield and like what they have to put um first and how much of like their own autonomy they have to sacrifice but i think um like i think i i don't know i didn't like the ending really too much for sonia and someone did say that she was compared to like the house cat at the end yeah in the first epilogue uh which was sad it's just so sad and i think that it's like confusing her to the home yeah the house that is a house cat they don't leave yeah um i don't know i just didn't like that that was her only attribute kind of thing exactly me too um something that i just want to point out oh yes and his crush on the zombie commander i think he is that was so funny like every time he was like giddy like he he thought like it was just so funny um let's see [Applause] [Music] i feel like there are so many characters that we could have a whole live show dedicated to each one let's talk about natasha because we haven't talked about russia and she is like well as simon shama describes her in the original debate like the heart of war and peace um should i go first or do you want to go no you go okay also yes i'm just gonna do some weird eye things but it's fine are you good yeah i'm good i'm good just concussion things okay go ahead okay if you don't want to look then please i'll just awkwardly stare that's fine okay um so natasha is actually based on tolstoy's wife's younger sister tatiana what yes i didn't know that yes wow um she is introduced in book one part one chapter eight on page 41. this black-eyed wide-mouthed girl not pretty but full of life um was just at that charming age when a girl is no longer a child though the child is not yet a young woman and then it goes on and says everything seemed funny so we are introduced to natasha as this beam of light that loves everyone that loves her family that loves herself that loves her brothers that loves life that loves sonja um that loves her father loves her mother we meet her at age 13 which is incredibly young and um and we meet her and i think what's so important is that her naivety is addressed right from the beginning um which is a an exact consequence to what eventually happens yeah someone just says unpopular opinion i didn't like natasha i could see that i could see that um tolstoy often uses the word child when referring to natasha specifically when saying um and not only child but girl and young she he uses all of these terms of you talking about masha um [Music] and by doing this gives her youth a lot of power and a lot of gravity her her youth is a really big part of her character and her character development which definitely sets us up for um the main cause of her moral change yeah her innocence stripped away from her by anatole and her light is extinguished and is gone um so something from the introduction that i want to talk about yeah um let me just get to it okay choose it on okay sorry really quick um okay so it says if we turn to tolstoy's own comments about his work for guidance we find perhaps surprisingly that he considered the episodes describing anatole karagan's seduction of natasha to be the crux of his work it is tempting to read these episodes allegorically picturing this consequentially russian heroine as representing her homeland while her conquest um by the immoral and deceptive elegant rake could be interpreted as symbolically describing the fall of russia to the french um which i thought was like very powerful um natasha's deferred marriage loss of the beloved and suffering and love came within her personal narrative the agony of a national tragedy so expressing the the national tragedy of moscow being uh possessed by napoleon it's reflected in anatole and natasha um okay let me just see if there's anything else that i want to say natasha's experiences in love and marriage clearly had a meaning for toaster beyond their symbolic potential within a few years of completing war and peace he would revisit the same narrative of the fallen woman in an extended probing in a sustained way in his next great work the first novel um he credited himself with so he credited anna karenina as being his first novel yeah in 75. um which i think you can sort of see the aspects that he brings about through natasha and um anatole as yeah yeah right which i think is incredible um okay let's go to okay so i wanna quote from the original debate really quick so yeah simon shama describes natasha in the original debate as the extraordinary exuberant girl at the heart of war and peace she's discovered and disgraced and what happens to this life force of war and peace is that she becomes ill she hates everybody she hates her family she who loved them all she hates herself she's close to dying of all this terrible feeling and then eventually somehow the spectral wraith of a girl comes back to life and looking on all um and looking on all the time is pierre bazukov another version of tostoy um pierre who wanted andre and natasha to be married but who finds himself caught between them he wants to be a friend to natasha but something inside of his heart and his body and his head also wants to be something more most of all he wants to somehow he who knows he can't bring natasha and andre back together but most of all blah blah blah and then he can continues and he does the scene of the great comet in two part five chapter 26 642 yeah which was just one of the greatest scenes in the entire book um and i wanted to highlight the fact that natasha is this light and this heart and she wears her heart on her sleeve and she falls in love with boris and then falls out of love with him falls in love with andre falls out of love with him falls in love with anatole falls out of love with him pausing him up again with andre falls in love with pierre like she you know she has her heart on her sleeve and she is the heart of the novel or the book because i feel like calling warren peace a novel um and she is this light and something else that i wept my eyes over um was the comment scene but also um page 1000 one page 1058 so i'm going to get to it really quick um okay okay it's the scene where andre is almost dying and he's talking and he asks are you not asleep no i have been looking at you a long time i felt you come in no one else gives me that sense of soft tranquility that you do that light i want to weep for joy and so this happens after she falls in love with anital falls out of love with him is reunited with andre her life is extinguished at that point and it is only rekindled when she is with andre again and he addresses her light by saying i felt you come in no one else gives me that sense of soft tranquility that you do that light i just like was brought to tears when i read that because she she herself is extinguished until until he sees her light again it's just like oh my god and also i do feel like pierre was part of that rekindling as well because yeah he was the one that was completely there for her when really no one else was yeah yeah which is kind of in that great comment scene on page 642 which we just have to read because not read it okay it's so good um do you want me to read it sure yes that would be great um okay oh no where do i even begin i don't know i'm just gonna close my eyes um oh god i don't know their whole conversation yeah i'm gonna start just like play the play the the musical song the music from the great comedy yes that's something um don't speak to me like that i am not worth it explained exclaimed to natasha and turned to leave the room pierre held her hand he knew he had something more to say he knew he had something more to say to her but when he said it he was amazed at his own words stop stop you have your whole life ahead of you said he to herself before me no all was over for me she replied with shame and self-abasement all over he repeated if i were not myself but the handsomest cleverest and best man in the world and were free i would this moment ask on my knees for your hand in your love for the first time for many days natasha wept tears of gratitude and tenderness and glancing up pierre she went out of the room pierre ii when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom restraining tears of tenderness and joy that choked him and without finding the sleeves of his fur coat through threw it on and got into his sleigh and then it goes on and it says it was a clear and fr it was clear and frosty above the dirty illite streets above the black roofs stretched the dark starry sky only looking up at that at the sky did pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights to which his soul had just raised just been raised at the entrance to the arbat square an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes almost in the center of it above the crutches oh i cannot pronounce that word i'm so sorry boulevard surrounded and sparkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to their white light and its long uplifted tale shown the enormous and brilliant comet of the year 1812 the comet which was said to pretend to protect all kinds of long human luminous no the end of the world uh wait okay sorry i lost my place whoa and the end of the world in pierre however that comet with its long and luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear on the contrary he gazed joyfully his eyes moist with tears at this bright comet which having traveled in its orbit with the inconceivable velocity through a measurable space seemed suddenly like an arrow piercing the earth for a mean fixed in a chosen spot vigorously holding its tail erect shining and displaying its white light amid countless other uh scintillating stars it seemed to appear that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul now blossoming into a new life oh my gosh oh man now i would like to create the symbolism of natasha being the comet is a natasha the comet it's that return it's that rekindling of her light because if you think of a comet it is a light source that is when pierre gives himself if he were free to natasha and kind of telling her that you know she she isn't disgraced by him that even though he tried to approach her he couldn't and he sees he sees her light and he gives it to her and then he sees it return through the symbolism of the comments yeah that's kind of how i saw it i don't know um yeah no i see that i think i like wrote a little bit about the comment as well because i think it's one of the most like it is one of the most memorable scenes and it's so beautiful and stuff like that but um i think yeah i definitely see what you're talking about i think like when it comes to um the force that tolstoy talks so much about and that like natasha feels is acting on her life and everyone feels is acting on their own life um like asking is the puppetry in war and peace is this like a hopeful message and when pierre looks at the comment um he identifies it with himself is it more about new life or is it about the end of the world like so many other people think um but like the comet itself is a symbol of prophecy um it's also itself like a fully prophesied object and a mapped out object because we can know like the orbit of it we know exactly where it's going in space um and time and so kind of peer identifying it with himself as both a symbol of like that free will and then people being trapped um in their courses i think like it's i think it's everyone in war and peace to an extent because it exerts a measure of control and influence on those who witness it whether people are frightened by it or so enamored by its beauty but it's also a celestial body in itself whose course is predestined um and like everyone natasha and pierre andre they also come to those forces but they are also forces that act on other people's lives their lives might be mapped out as well but they're kind of influencing and um influenced in this at the same time so everyone just gets like so tangled and caught so like i definitely see the comment too is natasha's kind of light although i think natasha was a little bit of a disappointing character for myself like the time that she was allotted and also um just in comparison with pierre and andre but i think like the comet too is everyone whose lives are just so entangled and by the time we get to the epilogue tube plato why am i saying plato did someone say plato tolstoy um is like you know you're like your life is potentially mouthed but there's also a sense of free will and that you can affect change in other people's lives who will in turn affect your life so like it's just i think it's the perfect the comment is just like the perfect little vote for literally everything industrial body for the book yeah yeah um yeah and i i do feel like it has a soul like the book it doesn't feel like a book to me it feels like yeah it feels like it's a living being it's literally a per it's 600 plus people yeah um but yeah i completely agree with you and i do feel like it's again talking about fate and destiny and the symbolism of certain things that that the characters take note of i feel like they often look for signs like in the sky andre sees himself in the oak tree and then the sky and then um we get the comet and it's just these really big and usually they're often natural for yeah um so they're symbols of nature as well as maybe tolstoy's relating them to god um but they they pose such powerful um emotional changes in the characters yeah yeah um okay i feel like there's just so much to say so much i want to say everything um okay what else do i want to make sure i talk about okay um do you have anything more funny about natasha or any of the other characters there's one character that i would love to talk about who is that petya rustov oh i oh no justice for petsya oh my god i loved his character i feel like yes yes i don't know if it's because it's like the younger sibling in me that like i just like really appreciated him because i don't know i felt like he wanted to be like nikola he wanted to be this great man and he was and he he died his death was so noble and so hold on what i want to say is is that we are introduced to him um in book one part one chapter nine page forty two he is first mentioned as little petya his youngest boy talking about the county youngest boy now that's the same thing with all the other characters the way that tolstoy first introduces him is how he is perceived by everyone so he is little petya he's always the youngest he's always his youngest boy um and like all younger siblings siblings like for me for instance i'm the youngest i have an older sister i'm always the baby of my family and so even when i'm 30 years old i'm going to be the baby and i feel like that's the same thing with petsya um okay um and the saddest part about his being the young boy is that he dies as a young boy his death is is premature and so i feel like he not only remains the youngest as being the youngest sibling but he remains the youngest because of his early death um and then i think my favorite scene with petya is book four part three chapter 10 page 1134 um let me get to it oh oh my goodness is it his fairy kingdom yes geez okay um yeah yeah this was really good it was such a good one what page am i looking for i am way too far ahead i'm so sorry is it when he like he ought to have known that he was in a forest yes having an issue 11 34. yeah yeah i'm just having too many tabs okay okay um yeah so it's it's petya kind of uh his forest and he hears music and he has this whole moment um it says pettya was as magical no as magical as musical as natasha and more so than nikolai but had never learned music or thought about it and so the melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him particularly fresh and active the music became more and more audible the melody grew and passed from one instrument to another and what was played was a fuse i'm not sure if that's how you say it um though pettya had not the least uh conception of what a fuse is each instrument now resembling a violin and now a horn but better and clearer than violin or horn played its own part and before it had finished the melody merged with another instrument i began almost the same air and then with a third and a fourth and they all blended into one and again became separate and again blended now into solemn church music now into something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant oh why what that was a dream petsya said to himself as he lurched forward it's in my ears but perhaps it's music of my own well go on my music now like yeah we don't we don't get it much from his point of view no but that scene i think it added the strength of that scene because we don't get a lot of him when we do it's so beautiful and of course you know he passes away soon after is killed um and denisov talking about now denisov's um relation to his death was just like i was just sobbing through the whole thing i loved denisov i wasn't expecting denisov to be in the epilogue yeah right because it's like she's a lifelong friend you know because he became he was probably nikolai's first and last friend yeah which i loved um is there anyone else that you want to talk about i don't know there's so many people i know 600 plus it's like i think like um death sorry go ahead go ahead no no i think death as a character is so good in war and peace and like what tolstoy wants you to feel towards death and also like the amount of death and where it occurs as well because like the first one is pierre's father um and it's such like a procession and a work of art and this like staged thing where no one's actually expressing what they're feeling to like the last or for example to andre's death or to petsia's death um where it's like this very well at least with andre's like a very natural acceptance and like i didn't i didn't feel any sadness at all when andre died i was like this is like exactly what is supposed to happen and it's like it's okay um like it was just so thick i feel a mix of that like i was right because i just wanted to keep reading about him yeah you feel like like inevitable and then that's exactly what we were talking about before like it was fate he was destined to die and i think he knew it because there are so many times where he's like you know i can't help tomorrow coming it's coming my death is coming like yeah i know my life is going to end and he always felt prepared for it we need to talk about andre's death more because no i just think it is so good the way that he like changes your attitude towards it like in the first with count bezukov where it's just like this awful thing that's happening in this extremely peaceful place but then andre um yeah if you want to talk about andre's death um it's just so good it's just such a natural it's just so beautiful yeah unavoidable thing you know like so i can't picture my beautiful death um okay let's just see where do i want to eat yes lucy yes that is exactly exactly what i got oh no way that's amazing yeah [Music] um his death shocked you more i definitely agree i feel like because it was sudden like with andre it was kind of expected it's foreshadowed a lot petsya he's known as being young so you expect him to have a full life and he doesn't so i can definitely see why that's emotional um okay so there are a few parts of this that i want to talk about so it's book 4 part 1 chapter 16 which is probably one of my favorite parts of the book um this is andre love what is love he thought love him his death love is life all everything that i understand i understand only because i love everything is everything exists only because i love everything is united by it alone i can literally start crying right now like okay okay don't cry on alive america um love is god and to die means that i a particle of love shall return to the general and eternal source these thoughts seem to him comforting but they were only thoughts something was lacking in them they were not clear they were too one-sidedly personal and brainspun and there was the former agitation and obscurity he fell asleep and then we get to his death yeah oh okay instead oh god okay okay he was seized by an agonizing fear and that fear was the fear of death it stood behind the door it having a personality death being a person but just when he was clumsily creeping towards the door that dreadful something on the other side was already pressed against it and forcing its way in something not human death was breaking in through that door and had to be kept out he seized the door making a final effort to hold it back to lock it was no longer possible but his efforts were weak and clumsy under the door pushed from behind by that terror opened and closed again once again it pushed from outside his last supernatural efforts were vain and both halves of the door noisily opened it entered and it was death and prince andre died but it's a dream that was a dream imagine and then he woke up yeah i just i that picture that image of death at the door pushing it and then the door opening and like succumbing to oh my gosh i am just lost for words like i was trying to i was trying to write um i was trying to write my book review for it and i literally could not uh how like how do i even form words to describe the words of war and peace so i just kept quoting telstra and that was one of my absolute favorite quotes and i think something that i noticed while i was writing in my journal was tolstoy always writes about love like love what is love love understand love is life all everything that i understand i understand only because i love everything is everything exists only because i love and it's the same thing with natasha being the heart of war and peace like is the central focus as well as war so it's it's this book is just made up of so much life like love hate it just war peace everything i know right like we're trying to have this debate and we're trying to have this discussion about like how do you even talk about a book that is un indescribable yes you literally can't like there there were so many times where i was like writing my notes or filming for my reading vlog or reading where i was just lost for words and then this moment i'm sorry for going on a tangent but okay um i want to talk about young nikolenko bokonski because the way that tolstoy ended the epilogue i know we talked about this in the um dark academics um book club the live show but the way that tolstoy ended the first epilogue and how he ended the character's point of view with nikolenko belkonski was exactly how i wanted it to end without me knowing i wanted yeah that way um so when he so nikolai nikolenka is first mentioned on page 118 even before he's born when andre says if i'm killed and if i have a son do not let him be taken away from you as i said yesterday let him grow up with you please so he's asking this of his father so even before he has his son he is concerned about his life and he already addresses his death if i'm killed so he is already foreshadowing nicole's growing up without a father um and then it also goes into so in the epilogue we have nikolinga referring to his late father asking yeah about his dad and also having a father in pierre like oh my gosh um and so he ends it with his desire to honor his father and to make him proud while also having a father in pierre and a mother in marya as well as a partial mother natasha because you know he knows that natasha loved andre with a different kind of love and it's just incredibly gorgeous and i just want to cry and let me just get to the epilogue really yeah yeah okay um [Music] okay just want to see which one i want to talk about okay but there was another scene sorry hold on one second [Music] um oh my gosh this looks like okay oh my gosh okay page 1268 epilogue part 1 chapter 16 my father he thought though there were two though there were two good portraits of prince andre in the house nikolai never imagined him in human form my father has been with me and caressed me he approved of me and of uncle pierre whatever he may tell me i will do it and then it goes on to say um i know they want me to learn and i will learn but someday i shall have finished learning and then i will do something i only pray god that something may happen to me uh such has happened to um uh culture what much so sorry for a horrible communication um okay let's see i will act as they did i will do better everyone shall know me love me and be delighted with me and suddenly his bosom heaved and with subs he began to cry goodness um and then um yes i will do something with which even he would be satisfied talking about he is in his father like the fact that he just like strives to want to please his father and to make him proud yeah oh my god and that's how that's how the epilogue ends yeah oh my gosh and then i love when he calls pierre uncle pierre uncle pierre so good there was a part where uh he talks about natasha's love for montre um let me just in the wait still in the epilogue yeah um let me just see can we also talk about how all of their children have the most significant names they're like andrei pierre maria masha like they all have significance um it was basically i i wish i wrote it down it was like talking about how nikolenka saw natasha as like differently because he knew that oh yeah i remember he loved his father so much and yeah and so he like felt felt her love for him through his father um let me just see can i can i find it no too many tabs carolyn um someone asked what did you think of the epilogues i i have different order as well the order i definitely well i don't know i loved how he ended it with me calling that because i feel like andre was such a powerful character and his death was so powerful ending it with new life and like ending it with like the balkans felt so profound um so i loved that but i don't know like i'm i feel so different about it like i don't know even how to word how i feel about it yeah how do you feel about it maybe yeah i really i think i like them especially the second one even though like i i think the second epilogue was a little overdone it was a little left in the oven um like it was just a little bit repetitive as well but i think like i just loved how the second epilogue just shows how like natural of a progression his ideas and like his philosophy like maybe if we didn't already get a sense of that uh were in like the narrative that he was talking about and then to end it with like andre's son um and another revolution and another repetition of like a comet or a person or something like that or another celestial body because we're all celestial bodies um it was just so beautiful and then to go on and like give his little piece in the second epilogue i think that was i just think that was so good like it definitely took me so long to like get through it and read it i think it was the most like slowed down ending um the book and it was it wasn't it was quite anticlimactic which i expected because like even you and i said like um how much you want to bet tolstoy's going to end it really anti-clown and he does but it's almost beautiful that way because like this book is so grand and when he like ends it quietly and i like you know like it's just him speaking to you like we end with tolstoy addressing the reader so it sort of feels like because when we okay i'm going to talk about like structure a little bit so when we start with the book it feels like tolstoy plops us in the middle of this big reception and he like takes us by the arm and is like okay here's this person here's this person here's this person and he introduces us to everyone and we get to know all the characters and we get to know who they are to whom and you know blah blah and then we are we have this whole arc of like so much happening so much happening and then he opens it with okay you know come back to me let me talk to you just just you and me yeah personal yes yeah and i like it i liked how he took us from introducing us to this world to closing us off just intimately with you and him yeah you know yeah i think for me it was like a bit more it was like more it was a bit more climactic than i was thinking because i think like when he's asking throughout the whole book what are the forces that do this what is this what is this i'm like okay when the heck are you actually gonna tell me um and i think like going through the epilogue like i thought it was a very it was a very emotional ending for me i think even the second one even like as like textbook feeling as it was um i think like it did not maybe it didn't provide so much of those answers but at least like what answer he could give to those questions and also how he wanted to like revolutionize the field like of historical record-keeping um and history and like especially that like spatial infinity i think for me that like slapped me in the face with andre and stuff like that so i think that was well worth it um and i think the ordering as well like i wouldn't have changed yeah anything is that i like i feel like if he flipped them it wouldn't have no because it's like this transcendent yeah yeah it transcends from the personal yes political the personal it's like the universal kind of thing yeah yeah to universal something that i want to mention that was actually in epilogue part two yeah um let's see it was when he was talking about the free will and like moving your arm freely nothing's there you can't move your arm freely so like as much as you are free to move your body however way you wish it if something's in the way whether it's an object or an emotion or something tangible over time yeah yeah or time or historical event you're unable to so as much as we have free will it's limited yeah yes yeah which i just like really loved okay let's see oh this one this i thought was really interesting so he says in chapter four still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us the life of the peoples so that's he gives us that he gives us the life of the peoples that we aren't really able to in other forms of historically yeah um let's see i i just love when he asks those huge questions like what causes historical events power what is power power is the collective will of the people transferred to one person like okay tell me how it is you know it's just so good yeah i don't know okay there's another part um okay so he's talking about napoleon's power uh in chapter four a return to the first is impossible the belief has been destroyed and so it is essential to explain what is meant by power napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war we are so accustomed to that idea and to have become so used to it that the question why six hundred thousand men went to fight when napoleon uttered certain words seems to us senseless he had the power and so what he ordered was done now like because it's so true like what makes 600 plus men listen to one man like what gives a man power and i think that that's why tulsa had to write such a huge book because to answer that question no it's not it's not an easy question to answer it's yeah i know i don't i think if you actually spent or like any amount of time spending time in the second epilogue like no you just kind of go a bit crazy and it feels like what is anything nothing matters like he also like telling you to live with that though like exactly yeah so that's why i was like i'm gonna be in therapy after this because like what is my existence at this point you know um let me just see if i want to make any other points yeah we're getting to the two hour mark if you have been here from the beginning thank you so much sorry sorry um okay i need my glasses again because i am blind okay um i'm gonna really talk about anatole that much oh does he move does he deserve it one thing that he did love in relation with andre was when anatol was wounded and he's gone yeah that was really nice and and andre says um to you you can love a person with a human love but to love an enemy you need divine love he was like okay i know thank you for that i just want to make sure i don't forget it yeah yeah oh this part i really loved i just want to mention it book one part three chapter eight page 260. yep every general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men and yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that enormous whole so it's that same thing of like even though we have this huge group of men in what makes one you know a group of men listening to one man they're all conscious about of being part of a whole they aren't that i think like napoleon sees himself as like you know a separate entity he is one he is the power whereas the men acknowledge that they're just one drop in an ocean of men um okay and then what oh i'm saving well like i don't really have that much other than like the quotes but i think like the quotes oh they're just like you know the whole book is like filled with um yes amazingly unspeakable [Music] life-changing of leah's listening um okay something that i did want to mention really quick yeah let me just see [Music] when he asks through andre um as it is now war is the favorite pastime of the idol and privilege the military calling is the most highly honored but what is war so like again one of those huge questions of tolstoy asking us and it's usually through andre which again why i love andre so much is because he's asking us big questions um but then victor hugo once quoted he who would paint a battle scene must have chaos in his paintbrush and i do feel like tolstoy did but at the same time he had tranquility in his paintbrush and he had like everything you know how you were saying before is like they're hello yeah yeah oops um anyway but i can't take myself seriously though um what was i even saying uh paint brushes oh yeah paint brushes um is that like he he like uses everything it's not just chaos it's not just yeah like i mean there's i think there's like no chaos though because he's saying like there's there's not there's not a level of randomness that could be attributed as chaos i think it's like he's saying like this is pre-destined to like an extent which is like horrifying um but also i think maybe i don't know i don't know that's a whole other can of worms no 100 but yeah um excuse me don't cast any notes everyone no no passing here um god like what do we even i there's just so much more that i want to say and it's like what is the point because you know what is the point um okay um let me just double check we could have literal debates on every single one of the characters i have so much written down for each of them um i don't know i don't know i i was going to try to make like a review video but i don't think i'm going to be able to i think i think our reviews are our reading vlogs because um we talk about our feelings throughout the whole thing and i feel like writing a review is trying to write how you felt while reading the whole book and how you feel about the end and that's sort of like because i was thinking the same thing like how do i write concise in a concise fashion how i feel about this book that's indescribable like it's literally impossible hard yeah so i know um um let me just make sure oh something that i did want to mention was because i was questioning like why did tolstoy name like 600 plus characters like why did he have to put that many people in his book and i think what i realized here i think what i imagine that purpose is is that he knows that even though they're side characters and they're mentioned maybe only once they're still full people and they're still alive and they have lives and they are these separate needs yeah unfortunately even though you know for instance like the hunting scenes i really liked and the way that they described the huntsman and the horses and the dogs and they got you know the man who owned the dog and the man who owned the horse and the herdsmen and all those people like he didn't just describe them as the huntsman because they had a name because they had a life because they were a person and i feel like it adds to the life of the story yeah true i know yeah war and peace has a soul and it's the soul of the castles and it's the soul of tolstoy and now our souls and everyone who has read worn pieces souls are also in warring peace i know [Music] i know i know should i give some quotes give your quotes how many do you want to pick i think i have at least two well i have at least two yeah um two is good because okay i'm gonna put my glasses on oh my gosh okay should i should i start oh yeah i'll post the poll also everyone if you want to share your favorites please please please um i'm going to do it on instagram and on youtube so if you guys want to vote either vote youtube or instagram or both okay um okay so this first one everyone is from book two part two chapter 11 to 12 kind of thing um yeah uh it's so good i think it's mostly pierre but it's also andre it's like their conversation anyway andre says oh no pierre pierre says i'm alive that is not my fault nope no you know what no my brain okay andre says i'm alive that is not my fault so i must live out my life as best i can without hurting others life as it is from the ferry scene yes leave one no peace um but then pierre says don't i feel in my soul that i am part of this vast harmonious hole don't i feel that i form one link one step between the lower and higher beings in this vast harmonious multitude if i see clearly see that ladder leading from plant to man why should i suppose it breaks off at me and does not go farther and farther i feel that i cannot vanish since nothing vanishes in this world but i shall always exist and always have existed i feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits and that in this world there is truth oh my god what what oh my goodness okay yes all of your guys's quotes as well are so the lofty sky it's gotta be the loftiest guy fine oh when we are asleep until we fall in love so many oh my gosh okay hold on i'm gonna get this ready it's so good do you want to share another one okay the last one is also pierre from book four part two chapter 14. um they took me and shut me up they hold me captive what me me my immortal soul high up in the light sky hung the full moon and farther still beyond this forest and fields the brights oscillating limitless distance blurred one to itself pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling stars in its far away depths and all that is me all that is within me and it is all i thought pierre and they caught all that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks oh my goodness it's here [Music] okay what are where are yours from i'm just gonna write this really quick um okay what is okay the entire scene with the comet yes yes how can one be well when one suffers morally that's a great one isn't that anna i think yeah oh yeah i'll share the votes okay so i posted on my instagram and on my youtube community tab um to understand everything is to forgive everything that's one of my favorites too um okay okay let me find mine i wrote a bunch in my journal so let me read them from there okay i feel like i mentioned so many that i loved um okay let's see oh we haven't mentioned this one yet and i want to connect it to anna karenina okay okay the whole world is now for me divided into two halves one half is she and there is joy of light the other half is everything where she is not and there all is gloom and darkness i cannot help loving the light and that is from war and peace book two part three page 508 chapter 22. that's andre talking about natasha and in anna karenina levin describes kitty as having she is a girl um there are two classes of women oh gosh how does it go i don't want to butcher it but it's basically that exact same thing talking about kitty and how like she is in a category of her own should i try to find it oh gosh i have i don't know quotes on my goodreads and i'm 99 sure that it will be there so let me just say um uh okay i'm gonna read yours everything i know i know because of love the oak tree cult yes the oak tree called for sure there's no greatness where there is not simplicity goodness and truth yes oh my gosh i reach to them let me get to that please excuse us we can only know that we know nothing and that is the highest degree of humanity oh my goodness come on professor caroline is unprofessional okay here we go but that's an anna karenina i was just gonna share an anna karenina quote that hadn't made with anything uh oh my gosh why are they all so good oh emma someone asked us before and i forgot to talk about it about the hunting scenes how you felt about it and how i felt about it being vegan because um i just read a quote and it says which is worse the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not uh because if you guys don't know tolstoy was also a vegetarian um that would be an interesting topic to talk about um i mean i don't know i it's like well-written misery and it made me miserable because it's misery so yeah yeah yeah oh my gosh okay i found it i found it okay are you ready yes from anna karenina all the girls in the world were divided into two classes one class included all the girls in the world except her and they they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls while the other class herself alone had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity like i just saw a parallel in both of those quotes like dividing the world into two halves for kitty and for natasha i don't know it was just like i saw a parallel there yeah you know i see it um is there another one okay um this one is from book two part three chapter 23 page five twelve um that i believe this is natasha and andre again i saw you may i hope he looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned expression of her face her face said why ask why doubt what you cannot but know why speak when words cannot express what one feels and that's how i feel about war and peace i cannot express how i feel oh my goodness i want to ask you do you like it more than adam karenina me yes like how do you feel about warren peace versus anna karenina uh oh i read anna and then december 2019 um so i feel like i gotta read it again but as of right now i i prefer war and peace really okay yes for me for me they're so totally different books that i feel like to try and pick one is like virtually impossible because they do very different things and like even tolstoy says like he acknowledges like a novel but he doesn't acknowledge war and peace as a novel yeah and we keep saying that you know war and peace is in its own category it's in its own genre what i don't know i just feel like they're too tall like picking your favorite child i 100 agree you can pick favorite children but i don't know i think they do such different things yeah yeah yeah they're both such masterpieces so it's like i choose to love them both for different reasons which i think is like no but it's like children my mom always says that about my sister and i because i will always joke like your favorite child choice says like i don't have a favorite child but you know you're both different and we love the different aspects of each of you so i feel like it's the same thing with war and peace and anna karenina i don't know emma is giving middle child energy oh my gosh i mean that extremely lovingly yes yes i don't know i just thought warren peace was like i don't know just so but like it's been so long since i've read on well not so long but i'm just a different person now so i don't gotta read it again oh gosh i can't choose any both in my life i completely agree there's a quote that i mentioned in my war and peace reading vlog which i have been editing that hasn't gone up yet but um i have a really massive teacup and every time i whip it out in my videos everyone like comments on it and they're like that's the biggest cheese i've ever seen and it's my favorite because i you know can have a bunch of tea and there's a cs lewis quote that says no cup of tea is large enough and no book is long enough to please me or no cup of tea will ever be long enough and a book never long enough to please me and that's how i feel about cups of tea and warren peace and anna karenina because they're both so long but like they'll never be long enough like i just want to keep reading them i think part of why i was so upset when i finished the book was because it was over and i wouldn't be able to live with the characters anymore i know no no uh what are the votes at okay let me check oh my goodness i mean i think i think we all know how to go but okay um two hours ago the original poll what on youtube was eighty percent for tolstoy 20 for dickens let's go to the new one where's the new one hold on one second okay 82 for tolstoy and 18 for dickens then we'll go on instagram so many ways to vote okay okay um the original has 309 people for tolstoy 72 for dickens now we are at 12 for dickens 62 for tolstoy so i think it's fair to say this round oh my gosh who's dickens charles dickens who's charles charles dickens question rank um emma should we share who our favorite is yes okay wait are we doing on a count of three yes okay one two three so surprising so can we just guys look at this come on can you draw can anyone draw like this no thank you thank you oh my gosh these are the honestly i started oliver twist though and wow you're liking i haven't started it yet because i've been crazy writing my notes and i haven't had any time but you're liking it yay better than pickwick yo yes yes yes um thank you everyone you're being so sweet i'm planning on opening up my etsy closer to the end of this month i was hoping to get it sooner but life keeps getting in the way um but yes it will be coming this month so that's great um very excited so yes everyone if you want to vote in the chat you can say who you're voting for if you want to everyone to know your team um oh god this was so much fun i feel like i could keep going and keep going um oh my gosh we'll just see if there's i can't believe so many people i can't believe you all wanted to read a 1300 page book yes thank you for wanting to read a 1300 page book with us and for wanting to listen to us for two and a half hours i hope this was the hour tell us toy love fest indeed it was indeed it was oh team carolyn and emma thank you i vote for sonia oh oops oh you're welcome thank you guys for joining us lucy is team tall story really she's team tolkien but oh my gosh next we do dostoevsky everyone says that that would be really interesting um but obviously this is based off of the intelligence squared debate so we do dickens and um what was the book for dickens next month or this month we're doing oliver twist which we aren't giving two months it's just one month for oliver twist since it's shorter so it's still 500. well yeah it's still pretty long um oh you read it just because of us thank you so much for wanting to read war and peace it was so exciting to see everybody's posts thank you so much for posting about it and tagging us and being on this incredible journey yeah because we just love it we be discussing great expectations yes you guys can find our whole schedule on our instagram highlights and also in our announcement videos in the descriptions of them as well um so if you have any questions you can leave them in a comment i will happily answer them a lot of the links will be in the description box um the debate dates we'll post about them but they're usually the first saturday of the month after we finish the book so like we finished war and peace in may and today is the first saturday of june so that's how we usually do the the debates um any other questions please where can you read my notes maybe i can maybe i can link them somehow to the description of this video i don't know yeah just a whole big organized chaos um every book is shorter than own but excuse me every book is harder than war and peace very true um give us access please link your notes okay do will do um oliver twist feels like a breeze after warranties true but i feel like war and peace is like a challenge that you love and then you i feel like it's one of those books that you not only enjoy the reading experience but you feel like a sense of accomplishment after yeah as many books give you because being like a reader of so many books it's kind of like okay finished another book finished another book but when it's more in peace it's like i finished more in peace like when i finished i was so excited um oh i hit the wrong one i don't where is tom hiddleston is the biggest question hello hello tom are you there tom oh my god tom thank you guys so much you're all about them this is so fun i'm sorry my head kind of exploded halfway so i can't believe i've read it finally i know we've written like a light mountain honestly the the everest of literature we have climbed the everest of literature emma everyone's loving your yellow octopus listen he's a jellyfish oh he's a jellyfish everyone get it well i don't know i don't know does he look like a i mean i could see he does kind of look like an octopus would you see the jellyfish yes i do see this oh my gosh yeah yes practicing his scenes for oliver twist will he play i don't know yet now i can relate to oh i hit the wrong one again now i can relate to all those memes about war and peace i saw the funniest picture um which i shared with emma i will share with you all let's get to it he has six legs six six likes okay pretend you have read this book to impress your friends leo but we don't have to pretend everyone because we have actually read it so we can just impress our friends by being ourselves carolyn what nevermind it's good it's good okay okay yeah that's what it means oh yes it was a monster but it was a good you're getting hell vibes that is a very nice compliment thank you hmm okay okay okay um so let me just let me just see if oh one more time change one more time everyone go vote if you haven't okay 93 tolstoy 17 dickens let's go to youtube oh okay for the uh votes before the debate 79 tolstoy 21 dickens then after the debate 78 tells 32 percent decades very interesting very interesting are we going to read the kingdom of god is within you i think so but i can't be 100 sure it would it would be on our um schedule which is again um in our announcement videos and instagrams um yeah but if you have any other questions after the debate you can leave them down below in the comments and i will gladly answer your questions oh um god he really did i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i can't help it though wins everyone act surprised what do you think see i was talking to emma about this that we're starting strong with tolstoy like his first big novel is war and peace whereas i feel like the books that dickens is at his like prime is in his later works yeah like it might shift like that's what i'm really interested in is like in two years when we're reading great expectations and you know what will what will happen um yeah true could you show us the additions of all our interests mine is way over there mine's downstairs but it's the penguin black clap black black lines yours is the english right because you gave it to me i did i did yeah oh my goodness okay thank you guys okay thank you so much for joining i'm so sorry that it's so long and then it's randomly but no no okay okay so we hope you have enjoyed the debate so far thank you so much for joining thank you so much for voting thank you so much for reading we appreciate each and every one of you so much we will see you guys in a month for the oliver twist debate yes we hope that you enjoy it and i look forward to being on dickens is team defense for dick and people that should be interesting yeah sure hello claire okay all right thank you guys so much for joining bye bye thanks

Channel: CarolynMarieReads

Views: 8,017

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Id: RQyrpcm6Hxw

Length: 162min 10sec (9730 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021