It all started when I watched the BBC Series War and Peace.
Not only did I fell in love with the story, but the setting, the costumes, the characters, the actors were amazing. I couldn't resist not buying the book War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and read it.
Little did I know. When the book arrived I was super excited and kind of shocked as I realized that there were 994 pages, with tiny writing and no images....
Challenge accepted... I thought to myself.
I started reading the book, but I found it really difficult and gave it up after a month.
Two years went by before I found the courage to pick the book up and start re-reading it.
It took me six months but that was the best decision I ever made. I could not put it down.
And even though I had to reread specific pages in order to fully understand the meaning, I was glad that I read it.
Tolstoy taught me so much through this book.
He presented realistic characters and their everyday struggles. He shows the reader what War and Peace really are and what they feel like.
There were many differences between the BBC adaptation and the book.
And even though I am not an expert in analyzing books, these are some of the lessons Tolstoy taught me through this journey.
1. 'Never never marry, my dear fellow. That's my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake'
2. 'The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.
'The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord'
A king is history's slave.
History, that is, the unconscious, general, swarm-life of mankind, uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool of its own purposes.'
3. 'But what is war?What is needed for success in warfare? What are the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery and their encouragement, the ruin of a country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty. debauchery and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the highest class respected by everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms and he who kills most people receives the highest reward'
4. 'One must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy'
5. 'It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty'
© 2018
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