In the epic novel JI. N. Tolstoy "War and Peace" Pierre Bezukhov is one of the main and favorite characters of the author. Pierre is a searching person, unable to stop, calm down, forget about the need for a moral "core" of being. His soul is open to the whole world, responsive to all the impressions of the surrounding being. He cannot live without solving for himself the main questions about the meaning of life, about the purpose of human existence. And he is characterized by dramatic delusions, inconsistency of character. The image of Pierre Bezukhov is especially close to Tolstoy: the inner motives of the hero's behavior, the originality of his personality are largely autobiographical.
When we first meet Pierre, we see that he is very malleable, soft, prone to doubts, shy. Tolstoy emphasizes more than once, “Pierre was somewhat larger than other men”, “big legs”, “clumsy”, “fat, taller than usual, wide, with huge red hands.” But at the same time, his soul is thin, tender, like a child's.
Before us is a man of his era, living its spiritual mood, its interests, looking for an answer to the specific questions of Russian life at the beginning of the century. Bezukhov is looking for a cause to which he could devote his life, he does not want and cannot be satisfied with secular values or become a “better person”.
It was said to OPier that with a smile “a serious and even somewhat gloomy face disappeared and another appeared - childish, kind ...” Bolkonsky says about him that Pierre is the only “living person among our whole world.”
The illegitimate son of a great nobleman, who inherited the title of count and a huge fortune, Pierre nevertheless turns out to be a special stranger in the world. On the one hand, he is certainly accepted in the world, and on the other hand, respect for Bezukhov is not based on the count's commitment " values common to all, but on the “properties” of his property status. Sincerity, openness of soul distinguish Pierre in secular society, oppose the world of ritual, hypocrisy, duality. Openness of behavior and independence of thought distinguish him among the visitors of the Scherer salon. In the living room, Pierre is always waiting for an opportunity to break into the conversation. Anna Pavlovna, "guarding" him, manages to stop him several times.
The first stage of Bezukhov's internal development, depicted in the novel, covers Pierre's life before his marriage to Kuragina. Not seeing his place in life, not knowing where to put his huge forces, Pierre leads a wild life in the company of Dolokhov and Kuragin. An open, kind person, Bezukhov often turns out to be defenseless against the skillful play of others. He cannot correctly evaluate people and therefore often makes mistakes in them. Revelry and reading spiritual books, kindness and involuntary cruelty characterize the life of the count at this time. He understands that such a life is not for him, but he does not have enough strength to break out of the usual cycle. Like Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre begins his moral development with a delusion - the deification of Napoleon. Bezukhov justifies the actions of the emperor by state necessity. But at the same time, the hero of the novel does not strive for practical activity, he denies the war.
Marrying Helen calmed Pierre. Bezukhov does not understand for a long time that he has become a toy in the hands of the Kuragins. The stronger becomes his feeling of bitterness, insulted dignity, when fate reveals the deceit to Pierre. The time lived in the calm consciousness of one's happiness turns out to be an illusion. But Pierre is one of those rare people for whom moral purity, understanding the meaning of one's existence is vital.
The second stage of Pierre's internal development is the events after the break with his wife and the duel with Dolokhov. Realizing with horror that he was able to “encroach” on the life of another person, he tries to find the source of his fall, that moral support that will give him the opportunity to “return” humanity.
The search for truth and the meaning of life leads Bezukhov to the Masonic lodge. The principles of the Freemasons seem to Bezukhov "a system of rules of life". It seems to Pierre that in Freemasonry he found the embodiment of his ideals. He is imbued with a passionate desire to "regenerate the vicious human race and bring himself to the highest degree of perfection". But here, too, he is disappointed. Pierre is trying to free his peasants, establish hospitals, shelters, schools, but all this does not bring him closer to the atmosphere of brotherly love preached by the Masons, but only creates the illusion of his own moral growth.
The invasion of Napoleon to the highest degree sharpened the national consciousness of the count. He felt like a part of a single whole - the people. “To be a soldier, just a soldier,” Pierre thinks with delight. But the hero of the novel does not want to become "just a soldier" nevertheless. Having decided to “execute” the French emperor, Bezukhov, according to Tolstoy, becomes the same “madman” as Prince Andrei was under Austerlitz, intending to save the army alone. The field of Borodin opened to Pierre a new, unfamiliar world of simple, natural people, but the old illusions do not allow the count to accept this world as the ultimate truth. He never understood that history is not made by individuals, but by the people.
Captivity, the scene of execution changed the mind of Pierre. He, who had been looking for kindness in people all his life, saw indifference to human life, the “mechanical” destruction of the “guilty”. The world has become for him a meaningless heap of fragments. The meeting with Karataev opened to Pierre that side of the people's consciousness, which requires humility before the will of God. Pierre, who believed that the truth "is" among people, is shocked by the wisdom that testifies to the inaccessibility of truth without help from above. But something else won in Pierre - the desire for earthly happiness. And then his new meeting with Natasha Rostova became possible. Having married Natasha, Pierre for the first time feels himself a truly happy person.
Marriage to Natasha and passion for radical ideas are the main events of this period. Pierre believes that society can be changed by the efforts of several thousand honest people. But Decembrism becomes Bezukhov's new delusion, similar in meaning to Bolkonsky's attempt to get involved in changing Russian life "from above". Not a genius, not an "order" of the Decembrists, but the moral efforts of the entire nation - the path to a real change in Russian society. According to Tolstoy's plan, the hero of the novel was to be exiled to Siberia. And only after that, having survived the collapse of "false hopes", Bezukhov will come to a final understanding of the true laws of reality...
Tolstoy shows the change in Pierre's character over time. We see twenty-year-old Pierre in the salon of Anna Scherer at the beginning of the epic and thirty-year-old Pierre in the epilogue of the novel. It shows how an inexperienced young man has become a mature man with a great future. Pierre was mistaken in people, obeyed his passions, committed unreasonable acts - and thought all the time. He was constantly dissatisfied with himself and revised himself.
People with a weak character are often inclined to explain all their actions by circumstances. But Pierre - in the most difficult, painful circumstances of captivity - had the strength to do tremendous spiritual work, and it brought him that very feeling of inner freedom that he could not find when he was rich, owned houses and estates.
Pierre Bezukhov is my favorite character in War and Peace. From the moment when "a massive, fat young man with a cropped head and glasses" enters Anna Pavlovna Sherer's high-society salon, and until the last pages of the novel, my attention is riveted to him. He attracts, first of all, with his tireless "search for thought", the desire to live according to his conscience, to feel "quite clean." Fifteen years of Pierre's life are passing before our eyes. Many temptations, mistakes, defeats were on his way, but many accomplishments, victories, overcomings. Pierre's life path is an ongoing search for a worthy place in life, an opportunity to benefit people. Not external circumstances, but an internal need to improve oneself, to become better - this is Pierre's guiding star.
He, the illegitimate son of Catherine's nobleman, Count Bezukhov, lived and studied abroad for ten years (from 10 to 20 years of age), returned from there as a free-thinking person, a Bonapartist by conviction, very far from the realities of Russian reality. Pierre is burdened by his ambiguous position as an illegitimate son, but visits the world. Everything is interesting to him, he is afraid to miss smart conversations, he himself strives to “express everything more fully”. At the same time, he is promiscuous in acquaintances (sprees in the company of Anatol Kuragin and Dolokhov), unduly trusting, and wastes his strength indiscriminately.
Having become the legitimate Count Bezukhov, the owner of a huge fortune, Pierre allows Prince Vasily to deceive himself and marry the soulless beauty Helen. He leads a painful life for himself: he shoots himself in a duel with Dolokhov, realizing the uselessness of this, then breaks with his wife and, having given her most of his fortune, not seeing any goal in life, leaves to be away from Helen and that dirt, into which he was dipped. Depressed, disappointed in people, dissatisfied with himself, Pierre painfully reflects on the meaning of life: “What is bad? What well? What should you love, what should you hate? Why live and what am I?
The meeting with Freemason Bazdeev seems to him a gift from heaven. Rapprochement with the Masons opens, as it seems to Pierre, a wide field of activity aimed at the benefit of people. Having summoned all the managers to the office, he orders to alleviate the fate of his serfs, free women with small children from corvée, build schools, hospitals, and shelters. But, having no life experience, the impractical Pierre again allows himself to be deceived, and the situation of his peasants worsens even more. Bezukhov becomes the head of St. Petersburg Freemasonry. He dreams of creating a world organization, involving the best people in it in order to fight vices, ignorance and arbitrariness. But Masons, being carried away by mysticism, did not at all strive for active social activity. Pierre's proposal was rejected, and he gradually begins to realize that he was mistaken again: the Masons did not at all try to help their neighbor, but joined lodges in order to gain connections with strong and rich people, of whom there were many. What to do? Bezukhov is sure that any violent revolution is evil. He comes to the idea of self-improvement: if each person becomes better, the life of society will change. But Pierre realizes that his dream is impossible. He sees the hypocrisy of the members of the Masonic lodges, he understands that they are only interested in "uniforms and crosses", and not at all in social transformations. The Count's life again comes to a standstill. He is dissatisfied with himself, but nothing can change.
Such is the path of Pierre Bezukhov, a beautiful, pure man, the future Decembrist.
Pierre Bezukhov is the son of Catherine's nobleman, but not a well-born one, but who got into a "case", as they said then. Thus, in terms of his wealth and title, Pierre is a full member of the high-society living rooms, but in spirit and habits he is not his own person there, and therefore he is more than anyone else capable of being critical of high society and getting closer to the lower social classes, being, as it were, a link link. At the same time, Bezukhov is illegitimate and only then formally receives the title of count. This circumstance also affects his concepts: he is more democratic. In 1805, when the novel begins, Pierre has just returned to Petersburg from abroad, where he was brought up in respect for the ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity, but without the horrors of terror. In high-society living rooms, among the costumes and concepts of the era of classicism, Pierre, with his ability to sit down so as to "block everyone's way," seemed to be "a huge and unusual place." This impression was especially produced by him "with that intelligent and at the same time timid, observant and natural look, which distinguished him from all" high-society people. With this look, Pierre surveys the noisily rushing life in front of him.
With fatal necessity, an idealist and admirer of Rousseau, in his personal life he does not protect himself from the gross violation of ideals. Pierre's wife, a beauty with no idea other than her attractiveness, torments him with her hobbies, drives him to wild outbursts, to a duel with one of her admirers, to the point that he almost rushes at her, and, in order to not to see her, Pierre gives her more than half of his fortune for a separate life. After that, he experiences a depressed state of mind. He is tormented by an insoluble question about the meaning of life: who is right and who is wrong in life's clashes, who or what controls the world? He confesses that he hates his life as a well-fed, idle and unsatisfied person. At this moment, he accidentally collides with the freemason Bazdeev at the station. With frankness on the road, they enter into a conversation, and in response to Pierre's complaints, the mason insistently demands to "purify life" in order to understand its meaning.
“Look at your life, my lord. How did you spend it? In violent orgies and depravity, receiving everything from society and giving nothing to it. You have received wealth. How did you use it? What have you done for your neighbor? Have you thought about the tens of thousands of your slaves, have you helped them physically and morally? No …. Then you got married, my lord, took on the responsibility of leading a young woman, and what did you do? You did not help her, my lord, to find the path of truth... And you say that you do not know God and that you hate your life. There is nothing tricky here, my lord.
The meeting did not pass without a trace, so that among the new and enthusiastic members of Freemasonry, which revived in Russia in the first years of the 19th century, was Pierre Bezukhov, who occupied a prominent place in Freemasonry. Pictures of initiation into Freemasons and Masonic customs are interesting in Tolstoy's novel because the author simultaneously reveals in the historical sequence different stages in the cultural development of the era. Through Freemasonry, Pierre comes to the conclusion that the source of happiness and tenderness is in the person himself, but Pierre cannot completely dwell on the contemplative service to the truth. The first sermon of his Mason mentor influenced him too much, and Pierre begins to put into practice his philanthropic ideas, improving the situation of the peasants. However, Pierre does not notice that the gentleman's benevolent mood is exploited by the serfs in the most unceremonious way, that his good intentions make the peasants lie, that is, they bring even more evil. In addition, in a frank dispute with Pierre, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, a noble and intelligent, but brought up in strictly noble terms, proves to him with a peculiar consistency that neither schools, nor hospitals, nor worries about facilitating the physical work of the peasants will give them happiness, so as under the former general conditions for them "the only possible happiness is animal happiness." The peasants are no worse off when they are even flogged and sent to Siberia: they lead the same bestial life there, and the scars on the body will heal. One can wish for the emancipation of the peasants only in the interests of the nobility, which is dying morally, rude because it has the opportunity to execute right and wrong. Pierre's objection to this remark shook the confidence in Prince Andrei's soul, but Pierre himself felt that there were weaknesses in the motivation of his views. Now he pays special attention to everything that Freemasonry gives, depriving a person of his "animal happiness." Returning from abroad after a meeting with Western European Masonic circles, Pierre among Russian Masons develops the idea of organizing Masonic forces, of attracting strong and virtuous people to the moral struggle against the "patrons of disorder" in the "whole world". But the Freemasons, among whom there were many people who were not convinced and tenaciously held on to class advantages, met Pierre very coldly and even hostilely this time, although until now he had enjoyed great love as the soul of society. Pierre felt the ground slip from under his feet, and he was seized by a longing for loneliness. He even gets along with his wife for a while, withdraws from social activities, reads the Holy Scriptures, and then everything that comes across begins to drink again in order to drown out the consciousness of the falsity of life. At this moment, a new meeting becomes a salvation for him.
Natasha Rostova returns from the village, who had liked Pierre for a long time, as a teenager. She did not think about doing good and saving the souls of the serfs. She simply, with her heart, gave herself over to the village, had fun, danced with the hay girls to the sound of a guitar, throwing off everything count and pretense, and returned to Moscow in a serious, significant mood, in which any falseness was painfully disgusting to her. It seems to her a wild and strange theatrical scene with strangely dressed men and women performing some incomprehensible actions and getting paid for it. Natasha herself seemed even more wild and strange when she allowed the courtship of Anatole Kuragin, cheating on her fiancé, Prince Andrei. But it was already too late. And none other than Pierre, by the gentleness known to all, had to take upon himself the heavy duty of informing Natasha that Bolkonsky was refusing her. But Pierre knows and cannot hide Kuragin's past, which makes marriage impossible. Natasha is desperate. But at the moment when Pierre reassured her, saying that her life was still ahead, he himself felt that not everything was lost for him, and a bright point lit up in his “softened and encouraged soul”.
The outbreak of the war of 1812 took Russia by surprise. Pierre, with his "observant and natural" view of people, feels that he is somehow "ashamed" to join the ranks of these new patriots, loudly shouting about love for the motherland. In addition, the precepts of Freemasonry did not allow him to go to war. However, Freemasonry was gradually losing its power over him and, having already completely broken with Masonic mildness, Pierre decides to get to Napoleon and hit him with a dagger. None of this, of course, happened, but instead Pierre reached the point of "simplification", as his servant put it. He, surprising by the appearance of the only civilian, was in the Battle of Borodino, and here he was especially struck by the simplicity of people's thinking and feelings, simple courage without boasting before death, simple fraternal service to any neighbor without demand and even without the possibility of reward.
Pierre remains in Moscow, walking along the empty streets among the fires that have begun, and here for the first time he experiences the joy of life and a keen love for life, saving some dirty, ugly child forgotten in the hustle and bustle, whom at first it was even disgusting for him to pick up. He was arrested by a French patrol among the arsonists. Tolstoy draws a striking contrast between Pierre's state of mind and his surroundings. He is ready to love all people and longs for active love - and he was locked up, his name was taken away.
Pierre had to endure the horror of waiting for the execution and witness the execution of the people taken with him; he himself was pardoned. This was followed by a long confinement in Moscow, a stage with French troops from Moscow, and, finally, deliverance. In captivity, Pierre's rebirth ends. Among other prisoners, Platon Karataev, a wonderful type of righteous man from the people, goes with him. Plato loves everything that surrounds him at the moment, and therefore his soul does not cease to emit rays of heat and light. For him there are no strangers. His life itself had no meaning as a separate life, but was a particle of the whole.
In constant communication with Karataev, Pierre, who seemed to be in a state of extreme oppression, actually comprehended the highest freedom - inner freedom. His very appearance changed under the influence of the work of thought and the general conditions of captivity. He became, like everyone else, ragged, dirty, with bare, beaten feet, but his gaze became firm, calm and lively, as it had never happened before. The former lordly licentiousness was replaced by "energetic selection." Pierre only in captivity recognized the joyful justice of the thought of negative happiness, which Prince Andrei once bitterly expressed to him. He realized that the absence of suffering is happiness. Happiness is in the person himself, in the satisfaction of natural human needs, and unhappiness comes not from lack, but from excess. Pierre almost stopped thinking about himself, his comforts. He even reached such a philosophy, in which everything seemed to be good. He laughs at the fact that they blocked him with boards in the booth - this, after all, cannot constrain his soul. He saw how the French shot the prisoners. And when Plato suffered this fate, and his dog howled over the corpse, Pierre only thought: “What a fool, what is she howling about?”
For the first time we meet Pierre Bezukhov in the salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer. Appearing at an evening where hypocrisy and unnaturalness reign, clumsy and absent-minded, Pierre is strikingly different from all those present, first of all, by a sincerely good-natured expression on his face, which, like in a mirror, reflects both unwillingness to take part in conversations that are not of interest to him, and joy at the appearance of the prince Andrew, and delight at the sight of the beautiful Helen. Almost everyone in the cabin is condescending, but rather even dismissive of this “bear”, “who cannot live”. Only Prince Andrei is truly glad to meet Pierre, whom he calls the only “live” among this society.
Bezukhov, who does not know the laws of high society, almost becomes a victim of the intrigues of Prince Vasily and his half-sister, who do not want Pierre to be recognized as the legitimate son of the old count and who are trying in every possible way to prevent this. But Pierre wins with his kindness, and the count, dying, leaves an inheritance to his beloved son.
After Pierre becomes the heir to a huge fortune, he cannot but be in the world. Being naive and short-sighted, he cannot resist the intrigues of Prince Vasily, who directed all his efforts to marry off his daughter Helen to the rich Pierre. The indecisive Bezukhov, only subconsciously feeling the negative side of relations with Helen, does not notice how he is becoming more and more entangled in the network of circumstances that somehow push him to marry. As a result, guided by etiquette, he is literally married to Helen, in fact, without his consent. Tolstoy does not describe the lives of the newlyweds, letting us know that this does not deserve attention.
Soon, rumors spread in society about the love affair between Helen and Dolokhov, a former friend of Pierre. At a party arranged in honor of Bagration, Pierre was infuriated by far from ambiguous allusions to Helen's relationship on the side. He is forced to challenge Dolokhov to a duel, although he himself does not want this: “Stupid, stupid: death, lies ...” Tolstoy shows the absurdity of this duel: Bezukhov does not even want to protect himself from a bullet with his hand, and he seriously injures Dolokhov, not even knowing how to shoot .
Not wanting to live like this anymore, Pierre decides to break up with Helen. All these events leave a deep imprint on the worldview of the hero. He feels that “the main screw on which his whole life rested” was curled up in his head. After breaking up with the woman he married without love, who dishonored him, Pierre is in a state of acute spiritual crisis. “What is wrong? What well?" - these are the questions that concern the hero. It was during this period of searching for answers to the questions posed that he met Bazdeev, a member of the brotherhood of free masons, thanks to which he was imbued with the idea of changing his life for the better and truly believed in the possibility of this: “He wanted to believe with all his heart, and believed, and experienced a joyful sense of calm , renewal and return to life”. The result was the entry of Bezukhov into the Freemason lodge. “Rebirth” Pierre began by deciding to carry out transformations in the village, but the clever manager quickly found a way not to use the money of the unlucky Pierre for its intended purpose. Pierre himself, reassured by the appearance of activity, led the same wild life.
Having stopped by his friend Prince Andrei in Bogucharovo, Pierre expresses his thoughts to him, imbued with faith in the need for a person to strive for virtue, and for Andrei this meeting with Bezukhov “was an era from which, although in appearance and the same, but in the inner world his new life.
In 1808, Pierre became the head of St. Petersburg Freemasonry. He gave his money for the construction of temples, supported the house of the poor with his own funds.
In 1809, at a solemn meeting of the lodge of the 2nd degree, Pierre makes a speech that was not received with enthusiasm, he was only made a “remark about his ardor”.
Circumstances, as well as the “first rules of the Mason,” force Pierre to make peace with his wife.
In the end, Pierre realizes that for many Freemasonry is not a desire to serve the great idea of virtue, but only a way to win a place in society, and, disappointed, he moves away from Freemasonry.
Arriving in Moscow and seeing Natasha, Bezukhov realized that he loved her. He helped bring Anatole Kuragin to clean water, thereby preventing the spread in the light of rumors about the connection between Anatole and Natasha.
Pierre wanted to come to the place of the upcoming battle in Borodino. After the battle, on the way back, he eats “kavardachok” with the soldiers, which seemed to him the most delicious thing in the world, and thinks that he would like to “throw off all this superfluous, devilish” and be “just a soldier”. This is the moment of true spiritual unity between the hero and the people. He is trying to unravel the mystery of the soldier's character. Why do soldiers calmly go to their deaths without fear of being killed? "He who is not afraid of her, everything belongs to him." With such thoughts, Bezukhov returns to Moscow.
At the time when the French almost reached the quarter in which Pierre lived, he was "in a state close to insanity." Pierre had long been occupied with the thought of the predestination of his fate, of his supreme appointment to kill Napoleon; “a feeling of the need for sacrifice and suffering” lived in him.
Waking up one day, he took a pistol, a dagger and left the house with the intention of finally doing what he was born for, but in fact only to prove to himself that he “does not renounce” his intention.
On the street, Pierre met a woman who begged to save her child. He rushed to look for the girl, but when he found her, scrofulous, the feeling of disgust was already ready to prevail over the spiritual need to be needed. But still, he takes her in his arms and, after long attempts to find her parents, gives the girl to the Armenians. Pierre is captured after standing up for an Armenian woman.
During the execution of the prisoners, Pierre experiences a terrible feeling of the collapse of all life convictions: nothing was significant in the face of death. He did not know how to live on.
But acquaintance with Karataev helped him to revive. Karataev's loving attitude towards life taught Pierre to appreciate the little that fate gives him. After his release, Pierre was ill for a long time, but was full of the joy of life. He became friends with Princess Mary, where he met Natasha, and the long-lit flame of his love flared up with renewed vigor.
In the epilogue, we meet Pierre, who lives a calm, happy life: he has been Natasha's husband for 7 years and the father of four children.
Arguing with Nicholas, Pierre defends the ideas of the revolutionaries - the need for change. Thus, we see that Tolstoy brings his hero to the beginning of the path of deprivation in the struggle for the people's happiness, the path of Pyotr Lobazov, the Decembrist, who was supposed to be the hero of Tolstoy's novel from the very beginning.
The quest of Pierre Bezukhov (based on the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace")
I. Introduction
1. It is impossible to retell Pierre's entire biography in an essay, so key points in his development are selected.
2. The main directions of Pierre's searches: the desire to be internally satisfied with himself, the desire to connect with people and serve them, liberation from false feelings and concepts (see the plan on the topic “True and False in L.N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace ").
II. main part
1. At the beginning of the novel, Pierre is a young, undecided person, in essence, who does not know real life. However, already here Tolstoy notes his sympathy for the ideas of the French Revolution and his subconscious rejection of secular society.
2. The period from Helen's declaration of love to the duel with Dolokhov. Pierre is completely captured by false feelings and concepts: sensual attraction to Helen, jealousy, secular rules, etc.
3. The duel with Dolokhov shocked Pierre. The realization that he could kill a person (and almost killed) because of vain and false feelings leads him to reconsider everything that he has lived so far, and Pierre realizes this life as a monstrous delusion In what happened, Pierre does not blame anyone but himself - this is a very important feature for the Tolstoy. During this period, Pierre completely loses the meaning of life.
4. Meeting with Bazdeev and passion for Freemasonry. In Freemasonry, Pierre is attracted by two main goals: to strive for moral self-improvement and to do good to people. This is what he is always looking for.
5. Pierre's desire to follow the principles of Freemasonry, attempts to improve the life of peasants, etc. Pierre begins to doubt Freemasonry, seeing that many are attracted to the lodge by self-interest, and not by love for people, and in himself.
6. Pierre on the Borodino field. His real familiarization with the people and the emergence of a sense of true patriotism. Pierre's further actions (the intention to kill Napoleon is a consequence of false heroic aspirations and vanity, but instead saving a girl from a burning house, etc.).
7. Pierre captured. Deep shock from the execution of prisoners. The second time, Pierre feels that “everything has fallen into a heap of meaningless rubbish,” and the meaning of life has been completely lost.
8. Pierre and Platon Karataev. Karataev seems to Pierre "the personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth", the embodiment of everything "Russian, kind, round." Pierre joins the instinctive people's truth, the essence of which is unity with people and the rejection of any individualism.
9. Through deprivation and physical suffering in captivity, Pierre comes to understand true freedom, he discovers the joy of life, he comprehends its meaning. He discards everything superfluous, unnecessary, which he previously considered important, and from this he becomes truly happy for the first time.
10. Pierre in the epilogue. Tolstoy portrays him slightly changed. The influence of Platon Karataev and the meaning of life that was revealed to him in captivity remain with him, but he is looking for his own path in life. In the epilogue, Pierre is a member of a secret society, probably a future Decembrist, who wants to not only passively accept life, but also actively fight evil and injustice. He is on the next step of the endless ladder of moral development and ideological quest.
