Leo Tolstoy's Role as a Peacemaker - Free Essay Example

Introduction

Leo Tolstoy, a larger-than-life novelist, was a talented, passionate, boundless, and curious man who drove through the world by exploring in every side of life. Even though Leo Tolstoy was a typical writer, his experience enabled him to have a pedagogical, spiritual quest, and to be a social critic who wrote his pieces of novels with an approach of being a peacemaker. As a result, Leo Tolstoy attained his unparalleled authority, that involved being considered to be equal to that of the Caesar (Hudak, 2015). Nonetheless, Leo Tolstoy was a Russian, but his biography ascertains the fact that his life was more than that of being a typical Russian (Hudak, 2015). There are various issues associated with Tolstoy's Russian life as a peacemaker, his political reasoning and being a religious analyst as outlined by his biographical sketch and his unquenchable thirst for airing peaceful sentiments in his masterpieces.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Leo Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana a province of Russia on September 9, 1828. War and Peace was his first greatest novel that he wrote in the 1860s. It is a novel that outlines how a nation ought to establish peaceful strategies rather than engaging in battles. On the other hand, he also wrote his second-best novel Anna Karenina in 1873 (Guinness, 2018). The two novels portray that Leo Tolstoy was a peacemaker concerning different aspects of life. He later wrote the novel The Death of Ivan Ilych which was the last novel he wrote before his demise that befalls him in an Astapovo, Russia on November 20, 1910. The novel outlined how an individual realizes that they have lost most of their precious life on non-sensical issues and later they seek to make peace with everyone they had wronged before dying.

Factors that Influenced Leo Tolstoy to be a Peacemaker

Before becoming a larger-than-life figure with peacemaking novels, Leo Tolstoy was a Junker in the army which enabled him to establish his autobiographical story that he termed as Childhood (Guinness, 2018). In the novel, Leo Tolstoy story stipulated his childhood memories which were mostly during 1852 where he submitted the sketch of The Contemporary. The Contemporary was a popular journal of his time that was accepted and marital story to be a popular figure in Russia.

The urge to be a peacemaker is reported to have developed during the childhood memories that Leo Tolstoy wrote in his first autobiographical story, Childhood. Successful completion of Childhood enabled Leo Tolstoy to begin his various works including Cossacks of 1862 that he did not complete since he had already left the army. In that perspective, it is evident that life changes and subjection to social services made Leo Tolstoy be a peacemaker in his novels. Leo Tolstoy progressively wrote his novels according to the aspects of life that he was passing through (Hudak, 2015). For instance, while serving during the Crimean war, he composed Boyhood (1854) which was a sequel to Childhood. The novel was also considered to be his autobiographical trilogy.

Another factor that portrays that Tolstoy was influenced by the aspects of life that you were passing through to be a peacemaker is that he began to write his views concerning Crimean war. His views were expressing contradictions of war that he experienced through the third-party series which is mostly known as Sevastopol Tales (Guinness, 2018). In the story, Tolstoy outlines how soldiers suffered stream-of-consciousness. Besides, Tolstoy declared himself to be anarchy and went to Paris in 1857 (Frazer & Hutchings, 2016). According to Frazer and Hutchings (2016), after squandering all his wealth, Tolstoy came back home and published Youth which is the third part of his autobiographical trilogy.

Leo Tolstoy as a Peacemaker

According to the contents of the novel war and peace, the storyline revolves around various incidents that took place during the era of Napoleonic wars. Like a peacemaker, he combined intellectual development of realists and fictional information which uniquely incorporated three long essays that he satirized history and laws (Hudak, 2015). In the novel, Leo Tolstoy tried to outline the relevance of adopting the quality and meaning of one's life to be mainly derived from our day-to-day activities. Therefore, the aspects portray that Leo Tolstoy wanted to enable society to realize the worth of having peace.

In the novel, Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy follows the same aspect that he used to write the novel War and Peace in 1873 (Tolstoy, 2016). In the book, Leo Tolstoy fictionalized various biographical events from his life that are mainly focusing on the romance of the characters Levin and Kitty. His pace of making ability is also portrayed in the novel since the love and relationship between Kitty and Levin resemble Tolstoy courtship with his wife (Hudak, 2015). Anna Karenina is a novel that outlines that "all happy families resemble one another" trying to show that various aspects ascertain the fact that each family is typically unhappy in their way. The publishing of Leo Tolstoy's novels took place in installments. For instance, Anna Karenina was published from 1873 to 1877.

Leo Tolstoy's Role as a Peacemaker

Leo Tolstoy focused on airing the facts about love and happiness by paying more attention to his life with his fiance. In the novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy majorly composed the novel from a critical view of his life when he was dating his lover. On the other hand, Leo Tolstoy added value to the quest for the true meaning of philosophy and religious conversation when he went to Russia. Leo Tolstoy had gone to Russia to seek answers concerning philosophy and religion, but he did not find them. He later claimed that Christian churches are built on corrupt minds instead of organized religion but airing their own beliefs (Hudak, 2015). In that manner, Leo Tolstoy added value to the quest for a true meaning of God and religion when he expressed his thought concerning religion and Christian lives in his publication called The Mediator (1883). His controversial statements about Christian churches and mostly the orthodox church of Russia, made him be watched over by the secret police.

On the other hand, the novel The Death of Ivan Ilych enables Leo Tolstoy to outline his thinking about death and grips that an individual struggle within their lives. The biographical sketch of Leo Tolstoy describes how his novels revolved around the aspect that he had passed through his life (Hudak, 2015). For instance, The Death of Ivan Ilyich portrays how Leo Tolstoy realized the struggles that he had surpassed and the impending death that he was anticipating in his jarring discovery that he had wasted his life on trivial matters. In that manner, Leo Tolstoy is efficient in enabling humans to realize that life is a journey and they ought to work on their goals and not to waste time on trivial matters.

A Change in Leo Tolstoy's Efforts as a Peacemaker

Leo Tolstoy portrays to change his behavior after he had tried to adopt a different belief that made him think of giving away his well. However, he had a disagreement with his wife, and he later decided to give all the royalties that he had accumulated and in all the novels that you wrote before 1881 as a way of making peace with her (Hudak, 2015). Since he was not happy as a soldier, Leo Tolstoy outlined his experiences during his service besides outlining a sudden moment of inspiration that made him to travel and to study beliefs concerning Russian orthodox church. He later found out that religion and happiness on earth meant nothing that he thought of giving out his wealth (Hudak, 2015). His peacemaking ideas deteriorated when he abandoned his own and position which caused a rift between him and his wife that later led to his early death at 82-year-old.

How Leo Tolstoy Could Have Approached the Current Situations if He Was Alive

If Leo Tolstoy was still alive, he could have championed for better lifestyle management of the soldiers taking place in warfare. Secondly, he could have questioned various aspects of religious practices concerning the need to uphold human behavior that is related to enabling other humans to achieve success in their life. Leo Tolstoy could also champion for a change in the society by outlining various novels that relate to political temperatures and a change in social systems regarding establishing equality which is a way of promoting the quality lifestyle. According to Moulin (2008), Leo Tolstoy could have handled the current political issues by incorporating spiritual knowledge since he was a spiritual educator. Besides, Cannon (2016) outlines how Leo Tolstoy could have sought to find the best way that political issues could be solved by incorporating religious aspects of equality and establishing quality life. As a religious educator, Leo Tolstoy could create a better understanding of spirituality and political issues in a constructive manner that could reduce discrepancies in political matters.

According to Slanar (2016), Leo Tolstoy outlined that a Soldier follows direct orders from people who are above them hence they kill, cut, and do all sorts of weird things according to orders from above. Therefore, if Leo Tolstoy was alive, he could have addressed the current political temperatures within the contextual analysis of a novel. As a result, the current political issues could have been solved by enabling people to read his novels and determining the best way possible to handle the challenges associated with lack of proper direction in political issues. Besides, Leo Tolstoy could have dealt with a lack of direction in political matters by addressing the problems and suggesting solutions within themes in a novel.

Similarly, Leo Tolstoy could have enacted a better solution to the current immigration crisis in the united states by outlining a precise setting analysis of the issues related to immigrants and immigration laws. As a political analyst, Leo Tolstoy could have found out a better approach to deal with improper lawmaking, and he could have enabled lawmakers to have a prejudgment of the consequences of bad laws made in a nation.

Most importantly, Leo Tolstoy could have incorporated the aspect that you communicated in the novel war and peace, and he could have included the ways that the military regime handled difficulties during the era of Napoleon wars (Tolstoy, 2016). As a result, he could have combined thoughts and developed an idealistic fictional way of lowering political temperatures between nations. Therefore, Leo Tolstoy could have contributed a lot in finding a solution among conflicting nations like the United States and North Korea.

How Leo Tolstoy Fits in the Concept of Political Science and How He Helps in Structuring Out Peacemaking

Leo Tolstoy fits in the study of political science since he mostly focused on sharing his ideas and concepts about peace and war. For instance, the novel peace and war revolved around the struggles during warfare, soldiers struggling during the wartime, and how the government did not support its military groups abundantly during the warfare. Political science involves the study of human behavior, associations, and the way human portray the attributes that are related to establishing political values (Tushev, Bushkanets & Frolov, 2018). Therefore, Leo Tolstoy is a perfect figure who championed for political issues in society and how will humans live according to political life (Tushev et al., 2018). Even though Leo Tolstoy communicated about religion, there are various aspects that religion and politics align in finding a better life for human beings (Wilson, 2018). Therefore, Leo Tolstoy fits well in the course concepts about political science.