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Part 5, Chapter 26
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Anna Karenina, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Marriage and Family Life
Adultery and Jealousy
Physical Activity and Movement
Society and Class
Farming and Rural Life
Compassion and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
Seryozha doesn’t believe that Anna has actually died, and whenever he goes for a walk, he looks for her: his nanny has confirmed that Anna is still alive, and he loves her too much to think that she’s bad. Karenin speaks almost abstractedly to Seryozha, as though addressing an imaginary boy, and gives him his religious lesson––verses from the gospels and the Old Testament. Although Seryozha knows the verses well, he gets lost in daydreams and can’t concentrate. Seryozha refuses to believe in death. That night, for his birthday, Seryozha makes a secret prayer that his mother will return.
While Karenin walls himself in his work and the façade of social ambitions, Seroyzha lives willfully in the bubble of his dreams, refusing to accept a reality other than the one he has constructed for himself. Karenin interacts with Seryozha as though his son were an imaginary, idealized boy, not the real, physical individual that he is.
Themes
