Coming Full Circle in Anna Karenina Essay -- Literary Analysis

What happens when you cut yourself off from society, or ar cut off by it? This is the main question that Leo Tolstoy explores in Anna Karenina. Isolated from society, Anna is destroyed by a conflict of wills. The desire of the singular is forced to give way to societys restrictions and requirements, represented in the image of the railroad track. Those who do not conform to society will lastly face death, a fate, that both Anna and Vronsky will not be up to(p) to outrun as a consequence of their illegitimate kinship. Besides personifying the demand of living at bottom societys realm of expectations, the railroad serves a central role in the organizational plan of the newfangled. The major railroad line scenes can be interpreted as pillars supporting the structure of the novel by connecting the Anna/Vronsky storyline. It is at a railway station where Anna is introduced to Vronsky, where he admits his spot to her and where Anna makes her first and last appearance. The re currence of motifs and the final return to initial associations within Anna Karenina serve to create the symmetrical architecture of the work. The first mention of the railroad is in context of children and their games, which serves as a premonition of the events to come. The children who are mindful of the current distraught household are playing with a box, representing a train. Stivas eldest girl is heard telling off her younger sibling, telling him that she told him not to put the passengers on the roof, instructing him to pick them up (Anna Karenina p.7). The childrens games foreshadow not only the accident at the station just Annas suicide at the conclusion of the novel. ... ... As a matter of Annas willingness to abandon her home and husband to build her happiness on other human beings suffering. Annas action causes kitty-cat to suffer heartbreak as she loses Vronsky, the man she loved, to Anna. In addition, Anna and Vronskys relationship breaks up Anna and Karenin s marriage and causes Serezha to grow up without his mothers presence. The wrath of society punishes Anna for her sin by crushing her, metaphorically as well as literally.BibliographyTolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Translated by Yuri Corrigan. London Genius Translators Press, 1999.Bayley, John. Tolstoy and the Novel. London, 1966.Gustafson, Richard. Leo Tolstoy occupant and Stranger. Princeton, 1986.Jahn, Gary. The Image of the Railroad in Anna Karenina. The Slavic and East European journal Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1981), pp. 1-10