Essays are my favorite pages of Tolstoy. Tolstoy "War and Peace" - essay "Favorite pages of the novel by L.N. Tolstoy"

L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” is one of the best works of world literature. "War and Peace" is not just an epic narrative about the historical events of that time. The main problem that the writer poses in his novel is the problem of human happiness, the problem of finding the meaning of life.
Many variants and rough drafts have been preserved, the volume of which significantly exceeds the main text of the novel. One of the most striking and interesting characters in the novel is Andrei Bolkonsky. This hero is in constant search for the meaning of life, walking the “road of honor.” For me, it is those pages that tell about the life and fate of Andrei Bolkonsky that are the most interesting and favorite.
We meet Prince Bolkonsky in the salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer. He is clearly not satisfied with the lifestyle he has to lead and the society in which he has to move.
“This life that I lead here, this life is not for me,” he tells Pierre. He is trying to find himself, knowing that the society around him is thoroughly saturated with falsehood and hypocrisy. He seeks understanding, but does not find it, because intrigue and gossip reign around him. People are only interested in wealth and power.
Striving for useful activity, Prince Andrei goes to the army. He dreams of fame, of achievement, of people knowing and loving him. His idol is Napoleon, and Andrei goes to the war of 1805, because it is there that he can become like him.
At the same time, he understands that he must fight with his idol. At the Battle of Austerlitz, being wounded, Andrei meets Napoleon. But instead of delight he experiences disappointment: “At that moment all the interests that occupied Napoleon seemed so insignificant to him, his hero himself seemed so petty to him...”
The hero's disappointment is becoming more and more aggravated, as he realizes that the same falsehood reigns in the army, from which he wanted to break out. Here are the same laws, the same thirst for profit and careerism. Once again, it is not the true heroes who quietly and honestly fulfill their duty who are noticed and rewarded, but those who managed to catch the eye of their superiors in time, although they were distinguished by their mediocrity and limitations.
Andrey’s meeting with Natasha brings fresh and vivid sensations: “No, life is not over at thirty-one. It is necessary for everyone to know everything that is in me. It is necessary that my life does not go on for me alone, that they do not live like this girl, regardless of my life, that it is reflected on everyone and that they all live with me!” It was love for Natasha that was the source of the spiritual rebirth of Andrei Bolkonsky, who had lost faith in people and experienced disappointment in social life, war, and the death of his wife.
The girl’s young and pure soul, her dreaminess and desire to love and be loved amaze the prince and awaken in him an irrepressible thirst for life. It is through the feeling of love that the author leads the hero to self-purification and self-improvement. This reveals the philosophy of all-forgiving love of L.N. Tolstoy.
Having led his hero through suffering, physical and mental pain, the author reveals to us the truth about the need to love our neighbor, forgive and strive for spiritual and moral improvement. Being mortally wounded, Prince Andrei understands that he has one last path left to go, but he is no longer afraid of death, because he managed to overcome mental suffering and achieve his goal, having learned what it is and what it is.
In his novel “War and Peace,” L. N. Tolstoy calls on people to leave hostility and struggle among themselves and begin to live “for real.” It awakens in a person the desire for moral self-improvement. The writer's innermost thoughts are embodied in the moral quests of his favorite heroes. Pierre Bezukhov is in search of “real life”; Natasha Rostova strives for a perfect state of life, where people live freely and selflessly. But, in my opinion, the most striking and holistic is the image of Andrei Bolkonsky. On the pages of his work, the writer clearly reproduces before us pictures of his life, full of losses, anxieties, disappointments and dramas. But he went his way from beginning to end. He found his happiness and came to the truth: “We must live, we must love, we must believe.”

“I don’t know how to answer your question,” says Pierre. “I absolutely don’t know what kind of girl this is; I can't analyze it at all. She's charming. Why, I don’t know: that’s all that can be said about her.” This answer was heard by Marya Bolkonskaya, who asked him to tell him about Natasha Rostova. Tolstoy showed the secret of the charm of this heroine through the richness of her nature.

The common favorite of the family, Natasha, overflowing with love, affection and joy for the people around her, settles into the reader’s soul from the first pages of the novel. At first it is a “potion-girl”, a “Cossack”, then a “remarkably pretty girl”, at the end of the work it is not “just a person”, but “completely different, higher” (according to Pierre), an exemplary wife and mother who is “to the extreme conveys her love to her husband and children.”

One of the secrets of the heroine’s charm is that she has her own world, which Tolstoy gradually reveals to us.

Natasha is a noblewoman, an aristocrat. However, moving among the nobility, she is close to the people and their poetry with all her being. Folk music, songs and dances captivate her. In Mikhailovka, she freezes, listening to her uncle perform the Russian song “On the Pavement Street” on the guitar. The heroine is seized by a passionate desire to dance. “Well, well, darling, uncle,” Natasha moaned in a pleading voice.”

This episode captivated me the most. “Natasha threw off the scarf that was draped over her, ran ahead of her uncle and, putting her hands on her hips, made a movement with her shoulders and stood.”

I, along with Nikolai and those present there, were afraid for the heroine, worrying “that she would do the wrong thing.” “She did the exact same thing and so precisely that Anisya Fedorovna... burst into tears.”

Tolstoy portrays Natasha’s dance as an instinctive penetration into the innermost secrets of the people’s soul, which this “countess” was able to accomplish, who danced only salon dances with shawls and never danced folk dances.

Most of all, I, like Anisya Fedorovna and my uncle, am amazed at how Natasha “knew how to understand everything that was in Anisya, and in Anisya’s father, and in her aunt, and in her mother, and in every Russian person.”

Together with Tolstoy, I never cease to wonder “where, how, when, from that Russian air that she breathed, this countess, raised by a French emigrant, sucked into herself this spirit, where did she get these techniques that pas de chale should have been forced out a long time ago? But these spirits and techniques were the very same, inimitable, unstudied, Russian ones that her uncle expected from her.”

In the development of Natasha’s character, not only her family, upbringing and people close to her played a role, but also Russian customs, traditions, and mores of folk life, with which the life of the Rostovs was closely connected.

Natasha’s musical talent revealed itself in a new quality in Mikhailovka, where she wholeheartedly enjoyed the purely Russian, village life, the playing and singing of her uncle, who “sang as the people sing, with that complete and naive conviction that the whole meaning lies in the song.” in the words that the melody is only for the purpose.”

In the image of Natasha Rostova, folk elements that are still preserved in some places in the patriarchal noble environment are poeticized.

The girl is spontaneous and spontaneous, like nature itself. She is extremely characterized by a feeling of closeness to everything Russian, to everything folk - both to her native nature, and to ordinary Russian people, and to Moscow, and to Russian song and dance.

That is why the heroine is happy because she felt her closeness with the people. “You know,” she suddenly said, “I know that I will never be as happy and calm as I am now.”

Reading these pages, we admire Natasha Rostova, as Tolstoy admires her, showing her deep, sincere, poetic, active nature. She has an inner instinct that draws her to those, sometimes unconscious, selfless actions in which her spiritual impulses are revealed, directed towards life, towards people, she has the ability to always guess what needs to be done and how. The heroine brings joy to people because she believes in the possibility of happiness. Looking at Natasha, it is easier to learn to be a person who loves life.


It is the Epilogue, the embodiment of Tolstoy's voice, that convinces most of all of the improperly direct speech. II Interaction of figurative and expressive means in L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” The complex structure of the content of L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” is conveyed not by individual figurative and expressive means and techniques, but by their varied and simultaneous use, forming wholes. ..

Flesh from the flesh of nature. Everything that happens in nature finds a response in their souls. The heroes discover their “own” sky, which is associated with important, sometimes epoch-making changes in their souls. An important principle of psychological analysis is the image of dreams. So, Pierre's dreams, for example, are very mental, rational. In them he sees his weaknesses, in them solutions come to him. In Prince Andrei's dream, those...

In all its purity and strength. Only the recognition of this feeling in him made the people, in such strange ways, choose him, an old man in disgrace, against the will of the tsar, as a representative of the people’s war.” 3. Victory and its heroes In the novel, Tolstoy expresses his thoughts about the reasons for Russia’s victory in the War of 1812: “No one will argue that the reason for the death of Napoleon’s French troops was, with...

... , "to infinity". But as a result of the author’s tireless and intense work, a novel emerged that constituted an entire era in the history of Russian culture. True and false patriotism in the novel “War and Peace” The novel “War and Peace” in genre terms is an epic novel, since Tolstoy shows us historical events that cover a large period of time (the action of the novel begins in 1805, ...


War and Peace is a multifaceted work, but every reader has his favorite pages. For me, perhaps the most interesting thing is the reflection of historical events, their creative interpretation. The Battle of Borodino occupies a central place in the military-historical events of 1812. Tolstoy called the Battle of Borodino a mirror of the novel War and Peace. He attached exceptional importance to this battle. The Battle of Borodino is portrayed as a people's battle. The battle reveals the true beauty of the Russian man. L.N. Tolstoy claims that the Russians won a moral victory, which convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his enemy and of his powerlessness. In this battle, the hand of the strongest enemy was laid upon Napoleonic France. Tolstoy depicts the greatness of the feat of the fighting people and at the same time the hardships, disasters, and torments that war brings. Cities and villages are dying in the fires. It’s painful to look at the broken rye, knocked out like hail, at the road laid by artillery across the arable land. What heavy hardships the Russian army and Russian peasants endured on their shoulders. The writer truthfully depicts people with faces disfigured by suffering, frightened and distraught soldiers, the misfortunes of the people and the army. But he calls all this a terrible necessity and speaks with love, pride and delight about those who endured difficult trials in the name of liberating their native land. Kutuzov's words: Wonderful, incomparable people, these are the words of the author himself. If we take the pages where the Battle of Shengraben is described, we will see in these chapters the heroism of a man whom no one considers a hero, who himself least of all thinks about heroism. Different voices, different destinies, lives, interests. The battle ended, and the people who fought heroically returned to military everyday life... But from the soldiers’ fires the writer leads us to the hut where the generals gathered. Here the conversations are different. Everyone brags, lies, attributing unprecedented feats to themselves, emphasizing their role in the battle. Heroism and cowardice, simplicity and vanity were contradictorily intertwined in the thoughts and actions of the participants in the battle of Shengraben. Participants in military events appear before us on the pages of War and Peace as bearers of the highest moral values. Tolstoy considers the outbreak of war to be the greatest manifestation of evil: The war began, that is, an event contrary to human reason and all human nature took place. War is always a terrible thing. Individualism, immeasurable lust for power, thirst for fame and honor, combined with stupid indifference to people over whose corpses one can calmly walk to power, this is what Tolstoy condemns from the position of a purely moral feeling. The most dear to Tolstoy is the love unity of people whose lives are subordinated to a common goal. The author praises the war of 1812 as a fair one, aimed at protecting the Fatherland, but at the same time sharply condemns its inhumanity, like any war. He emphasizes that living life does not stop during the war, people continue to be guided by the personal interests of the present. The events of 1812 are depicted in the epic novel as a cruel, but necessary and ultimately good strengthening of the Russian people. That is why many of the characters in this work experience a kind of spiritual uplift in moments of danger. For example, the departure of the Rostov family from Moscow is marked by a feeling of change and disasters: ..they were cheerful because the war was near Moscow, that they would fight at the outpost..., that in general something extraordinary was happening, which is always joyful for a person, especially for the young Pierre Bezukhov, in fear and together in joy. in Moscow, which was deserted before the arrival of the French. This joyful revival in the face of danger is filled with deep moral meaning in the novel. The war changes the lives of the heroes, frees them from many delusions, and enriches their inner world. The war, forcing them to leave their usual path, unites the destinies of Nikolai and Marya, Pierre and Natasha. L.N. Tolstoy noted that he tried to write the history of the people.... This creative attitude explains not only the problems of the novel, but also its composition. Historical events serve as the background for the narrative about almost all the characters and ensure the development of the action. So, for example, Andrei Bolkonsky experiences almost his first huge moral shock on the field of Austerlitz, and his life ends during the Battle of Borodino. Gradually, the novel increases attention to the depiction of the people and historical episodes themselves. The description of events reflected the author's worldview. L.N. Tolstoy’s views on the role of the individual in history led to the denial of the importance of military science, politics, and the inability to explain the causes of such historical events as the Peace of Tilsit or the beginning of the War of 1812. The author created a work of art, and therefore, rethought or even completely distorted some facts of history. The author himself admitted the presence of such errors. However, it is necessary to take into account that for L.N. Tolstoy the basic meaning was important; in accordance with his views, he gave preference to the general over the particular. That is why such inaccuracies that amazed his contemporaries and continue to amaze historians are insignificant for him. So, for example, Kutuzov, after Bagration was wounded, sends a new chief to take command of the first army. However, it is known that the first army was commanded by Barclay, while Bagration led the second army. For L. Tolstoy, the troops that took the first blow from the French and occupied the key left flank were the first in importance. Nikolai Rostov was awarded in 1805 the soldier's St. George Cross, which was established two years later. Other similar examples can be given. But all these inaccuracies do not in any way reduce the heroic and patriotic pathos of the pages of the epic novel, dedicated to the description of the era, the wars of 1805, 1807 and 1812. The author shows real-life persons and events that actually took place through the eyes of fictional characters in order to capture a human perspective on history. L.N. Tolstoy brought together and combined specific facts and fiction, which allowed him to create truly unforgettable pictures of Russia’s past.

Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" is one of the best works of world literature. "War and Peace" is not just an epic narrative about the historical events of that time. The main problem that the writer poses in his novel is the problem of human happiness, the problem of finding the meaning of life.

Many variants and rough drafts have been preserved, the volume of which significantly exceeds the main text of the novel. One of the most striking and interesting characters in the novel is Andrei Bolkonsky. This hero is in constant search for the meaning of life, walking the “road of honor.” For me, it is those pages that tell about the life and fate of Andrei Bolkonsky that are the most interesting and favorite.

We meet Prince Bolkonsky in the salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer. He is clearly not satisfied with the lifestyle he has to lead and the society in which he has to move.

“This life that I lead here, this life is not for me,” he tells Pierre. He is trying to find himself, knowing that the society around him is thoroughly saturated with falsehood.

And hypocrisy. He seeks understanding, but does not find it, because intrigue and gossip reign around him. People are only interested in wealth and power.

Striving for useful activity, Prince Andrei goes to the army. He dreams of fame, of achievement, of people knowing and loving him. His idol is Napoleon, and Andrei goes to the war of 1805, because it is there that he can become like him.

At the same time, he understands that he must fight with his idol. At the Battle of Austerlitz, being wounded, Andrei meets Napoleon. But instead of delight he experiences disappointment: “At that moment all the interests that occupied Napoleon seemed so insignificant to him, his hero himself seemed so petty to him...”

The hero's disappointment is becoming more and more aggravated, as he realizes that the same falsehood reigns in the army, from which he wanted to break out. Here are the same laws, the same thirst for profit and careerism. It is not the true heroes who quietly and honestly fulfill their duty that are once again noticed and rewarded, but those who managed to catch the eye of their superiors in time, although they were distinguished by their mediocrity and limitations.

Andrey’s meeting with Natasha brings fresh and vivid sensations: “No, life is not over at thirty-one. It is necessary for everyone to know everything that is in me. It is necessary that my life does not go on for me alone, that they do not live like this girl, regardless of my life, that it is reflected on everyone and that they all live with me!” It was love for Natasha that was the source of the spiritual rebirth of Andrei Bolkonsky, who had lost faith in people and experienced disappointment in social life, war, and the death of his wife.

The young and pure soul of the girl, her dreaminess and desire to love and be loved amaze the prince and awaken in him an irrepressible thirst for life. It is through the feeling of love that the author leads the hero to self-purification and self-improvement. This reveals Tolstoy's philosophy of all-forgiving love.

Having led his hero through suffering, physical and mental pain, the author reveals to us the truth about the need to love our neighbor, forgive and strive for spiritual and moral improvement. Being mortally wounded, Prince Andrei understands that he has one last path left to go, but he is no longer afraid of death, because he managed to overcome mental suffering and achieve his goal, having learned what it is and what it is.

In his novel War and Peace, Tolstoy calls on people to leave hostility and struggle among themselves and begin to live “for real.” It awakens in a person the desire for moral self-improvement. Tolstoy's innermost thoughts are embodied in the moral quests of his favorite heroes. Pierre Bezukhov is in search of “real life”; Natasha Rostova strives for a perfect state of life, where people live freely and selflessly. But, in my opinion, the most striking and holistic is the image of Andrei Bolkonsky. On the pages of his work, the writer clearly reproduces before us pictures of his life, full of losses, anxieties, disappointments and dramas. But he went his way from beginning to end. He found his happiness and came to the truth: “We must live, we must love, we must believe.”



  1. In the first volume of the novel, the author introduces the reader to the characters and gives them characteristics, which are then supplemented, but the first impression of each character is formed in...
  2. At the beginning of 1806, Nikolai Rostov goes home on vacation. He persuades Denisov to stay with him. A joyful meeting awaits Nikolai at home. Natasha is trying to find out...

“I don’t know how to answer your question,” says Pierre. “I absolutely don’t know what kind of girl this is; I can't analyze it at all. She's charming. Why, I don’t know: that’s all that can be said about her.” This answer was heard by Marya Bolkonskaya, who asked him to tell him about Natasha Rostova. Tolstoy showed the secret of the charm of this heroine through the richness of her nature.

The common favorite of the family, Natasha, overflowing with love, affection and joy for the people around her, settles into the reader’s soul from the first pages of the novel. At first it is a “potion-girl”, a “Cossack”, then a “remarkably pretty girl”, at the end of the work it is not “just a person”, but “completely different, higher” (according to Pierre), an exemplary wife and mother who is “to the extreme conveys her love to her husband and children.”

One of the secrets of the heroine’s charm is that she has her own world, which Tolstoy gradually reveals to us.

Natasha is a noblewoman, an aristocrat. However, moving among the nobility, she is close to the people and their poetry with all her being. Folk music, songs and dances captivate her. In Mikhailovka, she freezes, listening to her uncle perform the Russian song “On the Pavement Street” on the guitar. The heroine is seized by a passionate desire to dance. “Well, well, darling, uncle,” Natasha moaned in a pleading voice.”

This episode captivated me the most. “Natasha threw off the scarf that was draped over her, ran ahead of her uncle and, putting her hands on her hips, made a movement with her shoulders and stood.”

I, along with Nikolai and those present there, were afraid for the heroine, worrying “that she would do the wrong thing.” “She did the exact same thing and so precisely that Anisya Fedorovna... burst into tears.”

Tolstoy portrays Natasha’s dance as an instinctive penetration into the innermost secrets of the people’s soul, which this “countess” was able to accomplish, who danced only salon dances with shawls and never danced folk dances.

Most of all, I, like Anisya Fedorovna and my uncle, am amazed at how Natasha “knew how to understand everything that was in Anisya, and in Anisya’s father, and in her aunt, and in her mother, and in every Russian person.”

Together with Tolstoy, I never cease to wonder “where, how, when, from that Russian air that she breathed, this countess, raised by a French emigrant, sucked into herself this spirit, where did she get these techniques that pasdechale should have been forced out a long time ago? But these spirits and techniques were the very same, inimitable, unstudied, Russian ones that her uncle expected from her.”

In the development of Natasha’s character, not only her family, upbringing and people close to her played a role, but also Russian customs, traditions, and mores of folk life, with which the life of the Rostovs was closely connected.

Natasha’s musical talent revealed itself in a new quality in Mikhailovka, where she wholeheartedly enjoyed the purely Russian, village life, the playing and singing of her uncle, who “sang as the people sing, with that complete and naive conviction that the whole meaning lies in the song.” in the words that the melody is only for the purpose.”

In the image of Natasha Rostova, folk elements that are still preserved in some places in the patriarchal noble environment are poeticized.

The girl is spontaneous and spontaneous, like nature itself. She is extremely characterized by a feeling of closeness to everything Russian, to everything folk - both to her native nature, and to ordinary Russian people, and to Moscow, and to Russian song and dance.

That is why the heroine is happy because she felt her closeness with the people. “You know,” she suddenly said, “I know that I will never be as happy and calm as I am now.”

Reading these pages, we admire Natasha Rostova, as Tolstoy admires her, showing her deep, sincere, poetic, active nature. She has an inner instinct that draws her to those, sometimes unconscious, selfless actions in which her spiritual impulses are revealed, directed towards life, towards people, she has the ability to always guess what needs to be done and how. The heroine brings joy to people because she believes in the possibility of happiness. Looking at Natasha, it is easier to learn to be a person who loves life.