Ms. Hen reviews War and Peace volume 3

 

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

The Russian Messenger

1869

Ms. Hen decided to read the final volume of WAR AND PEACE because she read the second last year around the same time, and when she read it last March, she was struck by the similarities of the characters waiting for Napoleon to arrive to waiting for the COVID virus to strike. It's been a year of the pandemic, and Ms. Hen has had this book on her shelf for that long.

In this volume, Napoleon attacks Moscow and burns the city down. Most of the wealthy inhabitants leave the city to go to their estates in the country. They pack their belongings and escape. Some people linger, however, and the French attack them. Pierre meets a family and attempts to help them by running into their house and saving their child. He gets arrested and sent to a makeshift prison. He is forced on a march. The other members of his family do the best they can to survive the attack.

Napoleon's army disperses when they take over Moscow, and on the way back, it gets smaller and smaller. The Russian army gets larger, and they know where the best supplies can be found, so the French army dissipates after it leaves Moscow. Napoleon runs away and does not want to associate with the failure.

When Pierre is captured, he comes to a realization, "While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned, not with his intellect, but with his whole being, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity." Ms. Hen thinks this is true. Pierre goes on to say that the simplest things make him happy, such as the fire and the little food he gets to eat, and even the lice covering his body that keep him warm. Ms. Hen thinks that people could take a lesson from this philosophy, and it might mean being taken prisoner to achieve this, but she believes that it's the best way to view life, and the most honest way to become happy.

This volume took two weeks for Ms. Hen to read. She thought that the last epilogue was dry; it's an essay on free will, and Ms. Hen doesn't think it fits in with the rest of the novel. The first epilogue is about the characters after the war, and how they manage their lives. Ms. Hen thinks that after the war, they struggle to find meaning in their lives, and work hard to see that they don't have to suffer what they did before.

It took Ms. Hen over ten years to read this entire book. She read the first volume when she was an undergrad hen, and she had no idea what the world would be like when she finally finished it, how similar her world would be to the one in this novel. She has been afraid, but things are getting better, the war has been in our minds, and peace in our hearts; we can try to fight as soldiers and win, and conflict is always the heart of any story. We have enough conflict now for eons of stories, like this one, and we can only hope we can learn from them.