ChosenRebel's Blog

There is a scene in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (Part 2, Chapter 22), where Tolstoy uses the innocent response of an eight-year old boy to the wickedness of the presence of Vronsky in his mother’s circle of friends. It is a brilliantly written scene, powerful in its picture and effective in its movement of the plot. It has the lyrical effect of a movie scene where the score takes on an ominous tone. 

“This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass that showed them the point to which they had departed from what they knew, but did not want to know.”

Of course, Anna and Vronsky do not want to know because they are committed to their sin though every one of the 200 pages before this point in the book is evidence that their course heading is off and they are headed for destruction. The boy was the compass. His response was their warning. They ignored him. Their fate was sealed. The next 660 pages are a slow-motion disaster, filled with tortuous pain, dishonor, humiliation and death.

Now I am reading Anna Karenina again and I have found another, “child-as-compass” passage. In Part 1, chapter 28 (about 100 pages before the one mentioned above), Dolly’s children sense a change in Anna’s comportment toward them. Anna, their aunt, had previously been fully engaged with their childhood foibles and games. But now, post involvement with Vronsky, she is less loving, less engaged, less concerned with their interests. They have no idea why. They sense it, unmistakably they sense it, and thus became indifferent toward her. That is the way of corruption. It pollutes every relationship it touches.

I wonder if there are more of these “child-as-compass” scenes and how they function in the plot of the novel. If I find more than three others, I might do a mini-thesis / essay on the literary device and structure. In any case, it is another reason to keep reading and thinking hard about the genius of Tolstoy.

Update: For a discussion of the direct reference to “a-child-as-a-moral-compass” see this link.