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Leo Tolstoy Research Paper

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Leo Tolstoy: Light to Dark
A majority of adults enjoy reading works of literature that express the reality of life. One author who is well-known for a variety of realistic novels is Leo Tolstoy. As displayed in the dynamics of his various texts, Tolstoy entered adulthood in a vibrant style, while later resigning as a pessimist. Beginning his adulthood, Tolstoy had a hopeful future as he built a family, but later suffered a midlife crisis that left him close to death (Brand). Throughout his life, Leo Tolstoy was influenced by his relatives and internal struggles as he pursued his literary career.
Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born in Russia on September 9th, 1828 on his family’s estate, Yasnaya Polyana (Rosenblum; Brand). When Tolstoy was only two, his mother Marya Nikolayevna Volonsky passed away during the birth of her fifth child (Rosenblum; Radley). Only a few years after his mother’s death Tolstoy’s father Nikolay Ilyinch passed in 1837 (Radley). Following the deaths of his parents, Tolstoy and his siblings were cared for by their grandmother and their …show more content…

Some of his early influences came from his participation in the war, which allowed Tolstoy to express the brutality of war in his army-based novels like The Raid (Morson). Furthermore, his happy marriage led him to write the overall optimistic novel War and Peace (Radley). Tolstoy even based the character Sonya after his Aunt Tatyana whom he adored (Brand). Anna Karenina was also influenced by plenty. Due to his mother’s death, he developed a fear of childbirth (Rosenblum). As Anna giving birth she states “I’m dying now, I know I’ll die,” showing Tolstoy relation of death and childbirth (Tolstoy 412). Another influential factor comes from when Tolstoy’s neighbor threw out his mistress. The woman killed herself by train after. Mortifyingly, Tolstoy viewed her corpse (Lillios). The ideas of death by train and adultery are depicted in the

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