Riassunto
Riassunto di Resurrection
A chi è rivolto
For readers who love big Russian novels with a moral argument, and anyone curious about justice, class and conscience.
Che cos’è questo libro
Resurrection is the last novel Leo Tolstoy completed. He worked on it through the 1890s and published it in 1899, when he was past seventy and had turned from the art of Anna Karenina toward a hard moral Christianity. He wrote it partly to earn money for the Doukhobors, a persecuted religious sect who wanted to leave Russia. It is a story about one man's guilt, and also a wide look at the courts, prisons, churches and drawing rooms of imperial Russia.
The hero is Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov, a comfortable landowner who sits on a jury one spring morning. The prisoner in the dock is a young woman named Katusha Maslova, accused of a crime in a house of ill repute. He knows her. Years before, he wronged her, and he has never faced what he did. From that moment his easy life begins to come apart.
In this summary you will follow Nekhlyudov from the courtroom to the prison, to his own estates, to the offices of the powerful in Saint Petersburg, and onto the long road to Siberia. You will see what Tolstoy thinks of judges who punish and of owners who profit from land they did not make. You will also see the question at the heart of the book: can a person who has done wrong be made new? Let us begin in the courtroom, where the story begins.
In questo riassunto
- 1A juror recognizes the woman in the dockFree
- 2The past: one night, and what followed
- 3A careless verdict sends an innocent woman away
- 4Nekhlyudov resolves to atone and visits the prison
- 5He faces his land and the peasants who work it
- 6Petitions, officials, and the machine of the state
- 7On the road to Siberia with the convoy
- 8What the novel says about guilt, law, and renewal
- 9How Tolstoy tells it: satire, close detail, and the Gospel
Punto chiave 1 di 9
A juror recognizes the woman in the dock
The novel opens on a spring morning in a Russian provincial town. Prisoners are being led to court, and among them is a woman called Maslova. She is accused, along with two others, of taking part in the death of a merchant who died at a hotel. The court is a place of routine, and Tolstoy shows it as such. Officials yawn, lawyers shuffle papers, and the business of deciding a human life goes on like any other office work.
Prince Nekhlyudov arrives late and takes his seat among the jurors. He is a wealthy man of about thirty-five, used to comfort, clever talk and the good opinion of his class. That very morning he has been thinking of Missy Korchagina, the daughter of a well-placed family, whom he half expects to marry. His mind is on small things, on his tie, his dinner and his plans.
Then the prisoners are brought in, and he looks at the woman. He sees a face he thinks he knows, and he tells himself it cannot be. As the clerk reads her name and her history, the truth comes at him. She is Katusha, the girl he once loved and then abandoned.
Tolstoy lets us watch how a decent man handles a sudden shock. First Nekhlyudov feels fear and shame. Then he tries to push the feeling away and treat it as a coincidence, one that need not trouble him. He reminds himself that he has done nothing that other young men of his rank have not done.
But the thought will not leave. He sits in judgment on a person whose life he helped to ruin, and he cannot stop looking at her. In this first scene the whole book is set in motion. A man who has long lived by comfortable excuses is, for the first time in years, unable to use them.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Resurrection
What is Resurrection by Tolstoy about?
It tells of Prince Nekhlyudov, who sits on a jury and recognizes the accused woman as Katusha Maslova, a girl he wronged years before. He tries to make amends, and in doing so he confronts the injustice of Russian law and society.
Why is the novel called Resurrection?
The title means spiritual rebirth, not rising from the dead. Tolstoy shows a conscience buried under habit and vanity coming back to life in Nekhlyudov and in Maslova, as each faces what has been done to them and by them.
When was Resurrection written and is it a true story?
Tolstoy wrote it through the 1890s and published it in 1899. It is fiction, though it grew from a real case told to him by a friend, a judge, about a man who wished to marry a woman he had wronged.
Is Resurrection hard to read?
The story is clear and moves along.
What is the main message of Resurrection?
Tolstoy argues that people must face their own guilt before they can judge others, that courts and prisons do not reform anyone, and that real renewal comes from acting on the Gospel teaching of love and forgiveness.