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A review by lucysbookshelf
Resurreccion by Leo Tolstoy
4.0
I have some mixed feelings about this novel in the same way that I had them while reading "Little Women" by Alcott. As a reader, I'd rather have the author's ideas shown by the way their characters behave and try to see what philosophy they are following instead of having the author be a preacher throughout the story. It's palpable that the main reason this novel has for existing is it's pedagogical content about how the law and justice fail men daily, how the prisons can bring the worst out of a man instead of helping him and it repeats time and again who is innocent and clean of all sins and vices to judge others.
It surprised me with the main character, Prince Nejludov, due to how imperfect a hero he was at the beginning. I'm used to encounter in his books people like Konstantin and Pierre that are not too good and not too bad before they go into their hero journey, but this was a nice change in his way of writing. It also surprised me how in his other novels, the character seems fully transformed by the end of it, as if the change has already been taking over his mind and soul whereas here, the end of the novel is only the starting point for Nejludov to become the man he believes he needs to become to do his part in changing humankind.
I also believe this to be Tolstoy's most political novel, filled with details about the law and the state of the prisons, the inhuman way people were treated even before they were truly proved guilty and the main character's thoughts on land and how no one should own it.
Overall, the story has a good and constant pace without necessary following the formal structure of a novel and without a crescendo except in ideas, it's divided in three parts (making an allusion to Jesus Christ's Resurrection) and the characters (even secondary or named only once or twice) become fundamental when trying to elucidate Tolstoy's idea of how poorly prisons are managed and how the justice and the law can be the more unjust of all.
It surprised me with the main character, Prince Nejludov, due to how imperfect a hero he was at the beginning. I'm used to encounter in his books people like Konstantin and Pierre that are not too good and not too bad before they go into their hero journey, but this was a nice change in his way of writing. It also surprised me how in his other novels, the character seems fully transformed by the end of it, as if the change has already been taking over his mind and soul whereas here, the end of the novel is only the starting point for Nejludov to become the man he believes he needs to become to do his part in changing humankind.
I also believe this to be Tolstoy's most political novel, filled with details about the law and the state of the prisons, the inhuman way people were treated even before they were truly proved guilty and the main character's thoughts on land and how no one should own it.
Overall, the story has a good and constant pace without necessary following the formal structure of a novel and without a crescendo except in ideas, it's divided in three parts (making an allusion to Jesus Christ's Resurrection) and the characters (even secondary or named only once or twice) become fundamental when trying to elucidate Tolstoy's idea of how poorly prisons are managed and how the justice and the law can be the more unjust of all.