At Jackie's January 2015

Questions for Anna Karenina

1.      How are we to understand the epigram "Vengeance is mine, I will repay"? Should Anna's fate be considered the result of God's vengeance? Is Anna's desire to take vengeance on Vronsky being condemned?

2.      Talk about the first sentence of the novel. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Do you agree with its assertion?

3.      When Vronsky first meets Anna, "it was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will..." (p. 61). What is this something? Why is it expressed beyond her will?

4.      Why is Anna able to reconcile Stiva and Dolly

5.      We are told that it is unpleasant for Anna to read about other people's lives because she "wanted too much to live herself" (p. 100). Why are reading and living placed in opposition to one another?

6.      When Anna and Vronsky have satisfied their desire for one another, why does Tolstoy compare Vronsky to a murderer?

7.      After telling her husband about her affair, why does Anna feel that "everything was beginning to go double in her soul" (p. 288)?

8.      At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Anna has a very close bond with her son Seryozha. Talk about what it means for her to leave him in order to be with Vronsky.

9.      Why does Tolstoy counterpose Levin and Kitty's marriage with Anna and Vronsky's relationship?

10.  Why does Levin continually imagine his future in such detail, only to have his actual experience differ from what he had expected?

11.  Do you feel Anna's relationship with her brother and his wife Dolly is a good one? Discuss this dynamic and how you think it may play out as the book progresses.

12.  While explaining her affair to Dolly, Anna says, "I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself" (p. 616). Does the novel present these two objectives as compatible or incompatible.

13.  Reflect upon Karenin's predicament. He can't easily divorce his wife, yet she has moved beyond the pale of his influence. If he were to handle the situation in a morally upstanding way, what would be his best course of action

14.  Why does Anna kill herself? Why does everyone and everything seem so ugly to Anna just before she does so?

15.  Is it Anna herself or the society in which she lives that is more responsible for her unhappiness?

16.  Why are the consequences of Stiva's adultery so insignificant relative to those Anna faces?

17.  Why does Vronsky go to war as a volunteer after Anna's suicide?  

18.  Of all the novel's characters, why is it only Anna and Levin who contemplate suicide?

19.  Why does Levin believe that he must keep the revelation in which he comes to understand faith a secret from Kitty?