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Part 8, Chapter 12
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
Levin remembers watching Dolly’s children gleefully roasting raspberries and squirting milk, thus wasting the food, and compares this shortsighted fun to philosophical theories: philosophers can only destroy because they are spiritually sated. Everything boils down to one belief, that is, faith in God, and one practice: serving good instead of one’s own needs.
Like children who take being nourished for granted, the philosophers, Levin realizes, can only spin around playing their intellectual games because their deep spiritual needs have been satisfied, unbeknownst to them, by a higher power that we cannot and should not attempt to understand fully.
Themes
Lying on his back, Levin looks at the flat sky; even though he knows that space is infinite, all he can see is a blue vault. The experience, he thinks, is like faith: he has to believe in God, even without rational explanation.
Levin realizes that trust is the fundamental pillar of a happy life: he has to trust his relationship with God and then build the foundations of his whole existence on this unshakable belief.
Themes
