Why Does Everyone Like Anna Kristein

Why do people love "Anna Karenina?"

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is regarded as one of the most realistic novels and rightly so, with a gripping and detailed story- line, very real characters with their shades of grey it indeed makes for a very intense story.It basically covers the life of Anna and Levin, two people who have very opposite views of life and how this effects them and people who are close to them.The novel is very hard-hitting in the sense that it shows how the society is unforgiving when Anna breaks her marriage vows, which leads to her complete self destruction, on the other hand the same society is not so harsh with her brother Stiva.The novel makes us question many things like to what extent one can be  justified in pursuing one's happiness, questions on what is love and what is morality and how one should lead one's life as a idealist the way Levin does or one should be selfish in pursuing one's destiny like Anna does.These questions raised constantly  and very effectively throughout the novel makes it such a path breaking piece of literature.

Who is the best character in Anna Karenina?

As far as the character I most enjoy, I'm going with Oblonsky. Sure, he's dissolute and a rather solid link in the chain of his family's likely ultimate ruin, but he's so jolly and agreeable, genuinely trying to do the right thing by his class standards and mostly succeeding. The story is not about Oblonsky, so perhaps some would counsel to look to characters with more material as a suitable choice, but they are all rather disagreeable. Levin is kind of a prig, and Anna and Vronsky are too good for everyone else; their only vices are each other. I never could see much in Karenin. He's no dynamo for sure. Oblonsky, to the contrary, lived on the page: a fully fleshed human with faults, virtues and desires, shaped yet not fully defined by his surroundings. He reminded me of some people I know, despite that I have little connection with the Russian aristocracy.

I’ve just read Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. What can I read next that holds the same depth, complexity and poetic richness?

The more conventional response would be Louisa May Alcott's classic trilogy Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys (or any other Alcott novels).The less conventional response would be Janet Fitch's 1999 novel White Oleander, which was made into a popular film starring Michelle Pfeiffer in 2002.Not all of Fitch's readers realize that she got her start as a Russian historian, but she and I both attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon and studied Russian with some of the same people!The odd part was that I had read White Oleander many, many times before meeting Fitch at a writing workshop she hosted years ago in LA for Reed alumni and finding out about this crucial link between us! The book has a couple of very funny Russian characters in it.As far as I know, Fitch still teaches fiction at USC if you read and like the book and want to touch base with her. She is a lovely lady and counts Fyodor Dostoevsky among her favorite authors!

In Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, am I supposed to hate Anna as much as I do? Nearly stopped reading when Vronsky shot himself rather than Anna.

You are free to feel about Anna any way you like. Tolstoy was not feminist, though he did not hate Anna and did not intend for his readers to hate her either. At the start of the novel he described a woman who was almost a model of perfection and then destroyed herself and other people’s lives. But it’s not so uncommon for a reader to hate her, at times at least. I fully understand it myself.

What inspired Tolstoy to write Anna Karenina?

Many of the themes and characters in Lev Tolstoy's Anna Karenina are thinly autobiographical. For example, Tolstoy's mother died when he was only two years old. Some critics think this influences his portrait of the relationship between Anna and her young son, Seryozha.Later Tolstoy's father was murdered when the boy was only nine years old. This quite possibly imparted a morbid cast to major works such as Anna Karenina.Tolstoy's ambivalent attitude about the Russian nobility and admiration for the Russian peasantry are seen throughout Anna Karenina. His disillusionment about military actions arising from his service in the Russian army is reflected at the end of Anna Karenina when the Slavic war is starting.The novel's debates about religion, democracy, and Slavophilism vs. Westernism were very much a part of Tolstoy's own experience. The Slavophiles wished for Russia to retain traditional features of its culture while the Westernizers wanted Russia to move forward into the future along the lines of Western culture.The character of the shy and awkward Konstantin Levin is modeled after Tolstoy and the character of his wife Kitty (Scherbatskaya) is modeled after Tolstoy's wife Sofia (Behrs). Many intimate details of the Tolstoys' marriage are written into the scenes featuring Levin and Kitty.Tolstoy modeled the character of Anna Karenina herself after a well-respected acquaintance named Maria Gartung. Maria was the beautiful and brilliant oldest daughter of Alexander Pushkin, Russia's national poet. She is thought to be the "muse" who originally inspired Tolstoy to compose the entire 1000-page novel.To sum up, Tolstoy was inspired to write Anna Karenina both by one specific woman (Maria Gartung) and many and varied experiences from his own life. Though Tolstoy's mother died barely before he could remember her, his later interactions with Maria and his own wife and daughters allowed him to understand and describe female behavior and psychology up to a point.

What are some inspiring love story novels?

Here's one of the best Cripple Love stories that I have read and recommend!The Fault In Our Stars.I enjoyed watched the movie version of the book as well. A beautiful story.