Kreutzer Sonata
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1) a. By having Pozdnischeff tell his story to someone else, Tolstoy allows the reader to interpret the information for themselves. If the story was told as a first person narrative, the reader would not have had the comparison of values between Pozdnischeff and the other people on the train.
b. Tolstoy describes many aspects of the people on the train. He seems to emphasize on their faces and their reactions to the statments spoken by each other character. He does this so that the reader may get a clear representation of who the person is both internally and externally.
c. Before Pozdnischeff tells his story, the group on the train discusses the major themes of the novel. Each character seems to have varrying opinions on love, marriage, and women. For example, the old man feels as though marriage is based on the fear of losing one another while the woman on the train feels that marriage is based on true love between a man and a woman. The variety of convictions suggest the uncertainty and overall depression in Russian society at the time. With the majority of opinions stating the worse reasons for marriage, the reader recieves the idea that Russians are anything but hopeful during this time of distress.
2) a. Pozdnischeffs upbringing helped cause him to become “a voluptuary” because his parents never decieved eachother. In consequence of this, he had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical conjugal life. He felt his wife should be perfect and until this woman was found he must pay off all the woman he has relaions with in order to prevent them from thinking their conection was nothing more than mere lust. Pozdnischeff regarded this freedom as noble and of merit.
b. Pozdnischeff feels as though doctors promote a life of debauchery because they “pervert young people” by telling them about hygiene and by devising and teaching ways by which not to have children. In Pozdnischeffs eyes, doctors contributed to his “fall” by promoting and “extirpating” sexual freedom.
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3) a. According to Pozdnischeff, most women were raised “according to the principals exacted by the situation of our society.” The women of the wealthy class were brought up and educated to entertain men. They participate in the same “prismof artificial life” by going to school and getting jobs. All women are “decieved daughters” in Pozzdnischeffs eyes because they “are all dependent upon man.”
b. Pozdnischeffs claims regarding womens rights are that it is acceptable that they are not equal because they “assume their vengence” through their beauty. Mans lust for women has helped to make them “all-powerful.”
4) a. Pozdnischeff takes so long to get married because ever since he was a child, he was raised on the ideal of the “perfect woman” and it took him thirty years to find her. He is drawn to her by her beauty, her “slender body” and her “curling hair.” He later explains that it was only what she was wearing that was so “becoming to her” and that after a day spent with her, he desired to sleep with her. Pozdnischeffs parents lived happilly and always stayed true to one another giving him the ideal that domestic life is like that in all situations. He believed marriage would be happy forever. Pozdnischeffs honeymoon was “a period of uneasiness, of shame, of pity, and, above all, of ferocious ennui.” By the third day of the honeymoon, Pozdnischeffs wife hated him with a passion for reasons unbeknownst to him.
b. In Tolstoys eyes, the “abyss” represents a general uncertainty of what is to come. The abyss that existed in Pozdnischeffs marriage was caused by