anna karenin ending

[dee]

i just finished reading Anna Karenin and I loved it until the ending. I was so disappointed at the end - it seemed so trite that Levin found faith. what does anyone else think?

[Sitaram]

In the world of Russian Orthodox Spirituality, in the times of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, that was the ultimate thing one did... repent and be saved.... I think (off the top of my head, having been immersed myself in Russian Orthodoxy for a period of 20 yrs.).... in other centuries, in other cultures,.... perhaps there was something else fitting or sensible to "do" at the end of something like that.... I dont know, maybe in Japan, or the Old Testament, one would fall on one's sword, or be struck by lightening... but I am certain that various endings seem right to various cultures in various historical periods... (but seem unsatisfactory to other cultures in other times...)

Just my quick take on the matter

I suppose it would be entertaining and instructive to take various famous novels, and evaluate the endings, and speculate on alternate endings...

Look at the end of Camus' "Stranger", sitting in prison, awaiting the sadistic jeering of the crowds at the execution.

The end of Hemingways novel, where Catherine dies in childbirth...
Hemingway was re-writing his own real life experience...

The end of Steinbeck's East of Eden, where father blesses the sons with the hebrew word "Timshol"...




I know "Wide Wide World" the first American Best Seller, of the 19th century, has a HAPPY ending, where the heroine marries and lives happily ever after, but the novel is steeped in Christian values which guide a young girl,.... so it kind of has to pay off in the end.... (Like the end of the Book of Job, where he is restored to wealth and family and health...)

Here is what it says at the end of sparknotes.com on Anna Karenina



Tolstoy’s decision to end the novel with Levin’s religious regeneration, rather than with Anna’s demise, perplexes many readers who expect the novel to be first and foremost about Anna and her tragedy. The ending shows us yet again that Anna Karenina is a novel of ideas, rather than merely a tragic love story. The final chapters recounting Levin’s thoughts and feelings as he discovers the meaning of life are more abstract than any other part of the novel, and some paragraphs read like a philosophy treatise. The result is striking: Anna is hardly mentioned in the last part of the novel that bears her name. As Tolstoy clearly intends this omission, we must conclude that he means us to forget or bypass Anna’s life—at least in part—in the context of the novel’s search for higher meaning. When Levin comes to reject a life lived simply to satisfy one’s own desires, he does not mention Anna, but we inevitably think of her. Tolstoy invites us to think that Anna, like Stiva and Dolly’s naughty children who destroy things in pursuit of pleasure, has pursued her passion selfishly and destructively. Anna is the negative example of what Levin positively illustrates—the ability to live one’s life in commitment to something higher than oneself.


sparknotes goes on to say that, for Tolstoy, women do not have illumination of lofty ideas, but just have children and do housework (bummer).

[mono]

Hello, dee, welcome to the forum. :)
Yes, on first reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the ending seemed slightly odd and mysterious, but, other than Anna dying, very utilitarian (benefiting the 'greater good' for everyone).
I think the quotation Sitaram made summarizes the ending in the best way possible. Anna Karenina, along with many classic Russian works, I have noticed, deviates much from the classic love story emphasized so strongly by other literature of its time. I admired the character Levin very much, to say the least, and found his concluding position especially enlightening, after some thought. The conclusion, yes, did seem relatively abrupt, with the character Anna only little mentioned, but Tolstoy considered himself a very spiritual (almost transcendental man), promoting much for spirituality, love (but not necessarily restricted to the love between people), and happiness for everyone.

[Koa]

Levin is the character who represent Tosltoy himslef and hiw own inner contraddictions and research of spirituality and stability. During his life Tolsoty had phases of happiness within his family life and moments of rejections of it; for all his life he tried to 'simplify' to become nearer to the life of peasants, despite being a nobleman, which is reflected in the scene where Levin works in the fields, which is the kind of thing Tolstoy would do. All of his contraddictions led Tolstoy to religious crisis and writing about philosphy and his views he became a sort of leader of a sort of sect, the so-called Tolstoyanism,which many followers (young Chekhov for example).

Moreover, as mono partly said, the Russian novel tends to focus on more than one character, see for example Dostoevsky's 'coral' novels. Anna's story was inspired by a real fact but I guess Tolstoy added the paraller character of Levin to have someone who was the voice of his own feelings at the time... His interest was in the inner world of the characters and their relationships, not much in facts.

This doesnt answer directly to the question but maybe helps to create a wider knowledge on the writer and his general attitude.