Theory?

[Zack Harris]

After reading this book, I had some unanswered questions as to why he scattered his musings on the proper way to record history, and read it again. After the second reading, I realized that every section where he discussed a standard of recording history intellectually, he supported his beliefs plotwise. Intrigued, I took a further look at his overall philosophy on the matter and a view of the the entire work, and noticed that it has enough supporting elements of his thoughts on the matter to be more than mere coincidence. It is not a very easy thing to see, and requires some reading into to see all of it, but I have a theory that he wrote this novel with the secondary (or teritary) goal of supporting his ideas redarding recorded history. I believe that he didn't want to challenge a system that was so strongly entrenched within the minds of the majority of the world's population, so he did it very subtly with one of his works. I cannot simply point to any one or two details that support my theory, but there are many evidences for this if one reads the book with the intention of (dis)proving this. However, as I mentioned before, the require a little reading into and I am thus unsure If I am not perhaps reading in a little too much. Support? Attacks?

[Daniel A. C.]

I agree with you completely, I think War and Peace does deal with theories about history and society, how they develop. I'll have to reread the novel to get a better understanding of this, but in general I think one of the main points was about "swarm life", how history unfolds according to its own momentum, not guided by leaders and heroes, but rather by the interaction of the vast multidude of people and details that are involved.

I think these theories are important to the novel, as they provide the backdrop to the individual characters, who have to discover how to live in the chaos that surrounds them.

I find War and Peace to be a very philosophical novel, concerned with both the large questions of history, and the problems of the individual.

[GnomictheGnome]

yes this is exactly the message i got from it that it was his underlying motive for writing it. he gives a very full account of the theory in the second epilogue