“We must understand the real meaning of the words of the Gospel,--Matthew, V. 28,--that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery '; and these words relate to the wife, to the sister, and not only to the wife of another, but especially to one 's own wife.” (Tolstoy 195). These were the final lines of text Tolstoy wrote as a part of the resolution to his short story, The Kreutzer Sonata. According to this verse, and the themes in several others of his other works, Liev Tolstoy provides us a display of his moral view of right and wrong in relation to desire. He uses marital affairs & human desires as a tool to explore morality and the right and wrong ways of how his characters observe and react to their experiences …show more content…
His writing displays more morally proactive instruction with religious references or emphasis on the pain and suffering our submission to temptation can inflict. With his progression in understanding human nature, he simultaneously makes the result of succumbing to desire or committing adultery in his novels increasingly worse over time. His works suggest that erotic desire, including the desire to have an affair, is a part of human nature and to a degree understandable. However, Tolstoy wants his audience to understand that even though it may be human nature, we should not allow this desire to dictate the ways in which we live our lives, for desire is fickle and does not lead to lasting happiness. Tolstoy shows that the consequences of affairs serving our desires outweigh the benefits. The consequences not only harm ourselves, but many people in our lives. By showing how much damage an affair can cause, Tolstoy implores us to not allow the animal in man to overcome our moral …show more content…
He needed to ignore this desire if he truly wanted to continue to practice living a more meaningful and honest life. Over time Olenin gives in, and allows his desire to best his moral code and dedication to his new life by attempting to win Maryanka over for the first time (Tolstoy 140). As I have mentioned in a previous works, his decision to win over Maryanka contradicts the moral life he so desired for. Rather, his actions speak to his previous life and true nature. Just as he recognizes his failure both to his honest new life and the moral code he attempted to abide by, we begin to see Tolstoy’s view of this behavior and that our desires are inseparable from human nature (Tolstoy 149). However, even after this realization, Olenin tries to win Maryanka’s affections over for the second time only this time to make matters ethically worse, Olenin abandon’s viewing the battle between the Cossack and Chechen people to win her over (Tolstoy 175). Olenin knows that Lukashka is fighting the Chechen’s, and while he is preying on Maryanka, Luka is shot in the abdomen at point blank range by a Chechen man. Rather than having been at the battle to at least help Luka, he is attempting to take Maryanka from him. Olenin asks her for her hand once again and is again rejected by her(Tolstoy 176). He has betrayed Maryanka’s request to not be pursued twice and has taken advantage of her honest friendship
In conclusion, both of these pieces of work were written in their cultural and historical context. I attempted to compare the two in reference to plot, character, morals/values, and themes and explain them in their cultural and historical context. Dangerous Liaisons was considered to be a condemned piece of literature and Cruel Intentions emphasized this immorality as a modernized version of the story.
Criticizing the cruelty of society, Baudelaire begins his book, Flowers of Evil, with a warning. To foreshadow the disturbing contents that his book focuses on, Baudelaire describes the unpleasant traits of men. Lured by the words of the Devil, people victimize others. Grotesque images of torture and swarming maggots exemplifies the horrors of our actions. Yes, our actions. Baudelaire puts shame to every human, including the reader, through the word “ours.” Humiliated, the reader dare not to allow himself to be guilty with the worst sin – boredom. Separated by dashes, the last sentence commands the reader to choose whether to fall to the worst or save himself a little bit of dignity. Accused and challenged, the reader is pressured to ponder
When comparing Chekov’s elements that construct a love story to those in Leigh Michaels’ “The Essential Elements of Writing a Romance Novel”, readers must make their own judgments with what little Chekov provides. Chekov accomplishes this task by portraying Anna's and Gurov's relationship through using a lens of representative true human behavior. Unlike a traditional romantic story, Chekov fails to provide the reader with a concrete answer to how or if the lover’s will endeavor. Furthermore, the expectations of the romantic hero and heroine are skewed when analyzing Gurov and Anna. Readers are forced use their own judgments to fill in the blanks that Chekov provides because of the vast uncertainty due to human nature in the short
It is of particular interest to look at sexuality in relation to the modern daily life. What may seem abnormal and even abject in daily life is constitutive in human sexuality. It goes beyond normal functioning, rationality, and purposefulness, making sexuality inherently excessive. The discrepancy between the sexual and daily life connotes the otherness of sexuality. Freud mentions this in Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality in his contention that perversion should be used a term of reproach: “no healthy person, it appears, can fail to make some addition that might be called perverse to the normal sexual aim.” Although he may have been focusing on the abnormal particularities in normal sexual life, this idea expounds ...
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul” (Nabokov 9). Quoted from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, Humbert Humbert briefly describes his sensibilities towards his love Lolita. I’ve italicized love for the reason that this book is perceived often as not a true American love story but as a pedophile’s lust. The reasoning for the italicization is because I wanted to emphasis on the point that this book offers more than that of a pedophile’s love. Nabokov’s novel does a very good job of creating an interesting yet unorthodoxed plot. What Nabokov might find acceptable in today’s society, some people might find very offensive and disrupting. He does this to grab the reader’s attention; therefore, building their interests by having them see the other side of things. Why many readers may find this book to be associated with pornography or just another literary piece surrounded around pedophilia, Nabokov hits you with textual evidence, which may sway reader’s minds. As a reader of this novel, I am compelled to show you how this book is a true American “Love Story.”
...sexual act is can be looked at as similar to today’s society. The idea of sexual desire being a mutually entered into activity as part of marriage is the ideal, along with the consenting unconnected use of one another for sex. Soble also presents valuable solutions to “Kant’s sexual problem”, however his solutions are simply ideas. There is no way to wholly reform the sexual world. There will always be people out there who let their sexual desire over power their mind and morals.
The application of morality begins at a young age for many people. Many children take on the morality of their parents through the daily events that influence their development. In many ways, parental sexuality means fidelity, and the ability to stay monogamous in order to properly raise a child in a complete family unit. This in turn expresses sexual fidelity as a form of morality, and without sexual fidelity, there will be painfully undesirable consequences. Along with the family unit being an influential aspect of sexuality, religion, particularly Catholicism, claim that sexual activity is solely justified by the reason of procreation. Freud also perceived sexuality as the dark and evil part of the human being, when allowed to freely express sexuality, the person i...
In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the overruling drive of the narrator, Humbert Humbert, is his want to attest himself master of all, whether man or woman, his prime cravings, all-powerful destiny, or even something as broad as language. Through the novel the reader begins to see Humbert’s most extreme engagements and feelings, from his marriage to his imprisonment, not as a consequence of his sensual, raw desires but rather his mental want to triumph, to own, and to control. To Humbert, human interaction becomes, or is, very unassuming for him: his reality is that females are to be possessed, and men ought to contest for the ownership of them. They, the women, become the very definition of superiority and dominance. But it isn’t so barbaric of Humbert, for he designates his sexuality as of exceptionally polished taste, a penchant loftier than the typical man’s. His relationship with Valerie and Charlotte; his infatuation with Lolita; and his murdering of Quilty are all definite examples of his yearning for power. It is so that throughout the novel, and especially by its conclusion, the reader sees that Humbert’s desire for superiority subjugates the odd particularities of his wants and is the actual reason of his anguish.
Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Lolita, portrays this distinction between love and lust through a morally complicated and controversial story. The story consists of many layered themes, which a reader must first sort through in order to make sense of the question of love. The subject most explicitly present in Lolita is pedophilia. Because we live in world of pre-conceived and ingrained societal norms regarding what is “morally acceptable” and “kosher,” and because pedophilia is generally considered one of the most heinous and immoral of crimes, many readers cringe at the very mention of such a topic and, therefore, fail to recognize the underlying and essential question of love verses lust present in the novel. In order to achieve a true understanding of Lolita, a reader must set aside such societal norms and pre-conceived notions. Gaining a true understanding of Nabokov’s novel requires an open and unbiased mind.
James Bond is known as the worlds’ greatest spy, Superman is known as the worlds’ greatest superhero and Harry Potter is known as the worlds’ greatest wizard. These gentlemen are present as the “world greatest”, but there was a struggle for them to get that title, a struggle for recognition. Recognition has been a struggle for people for a long time in history and it is mainly displayed within literature. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a great philosopher who explains the struggle for recognition by using the master-slave dialectic. This analytic is common among humans especially within relationships. Hegel explains that the goal of the master is to stay the master, while the goal of the slave is to become the master that means the roles can indeed switch but there is a struggle between the two.
The period is the early 19th century; those involved and discussed in this essay are for the most part Russian gentry. Increasingly relaxed social mores in the “developed” world, including the greater freedom to choose to whom one gets married to as well as increased women’s sexual rights, were much more uncommon during the time that War and Peace takes place. Tolstoy, an outspoken critic of arranged marriages, uses the characters in his novel as a way of exploring the various types of love, and in general the interactions between men and women of the time. This essay will attempt to focus on these relationships in an effort to get a better idea of Tolstoy’s views on the proper roles that men and women should play as friends, lovers, or spouses. By exploring the male/female relationships among the noble families, a detailed picture of both the expectations and realms of acceptable behavior will be established.
Within the tortured mind of a young Russian university student, an epic battle rages between two opposite ideologies - the conservative Christianity characteristic of the time, and a new modernist humanism gaining prevalence in academia. Fyodor Dostoevsky in the novel Crime and Punishment uses this conflict to illustrate why the coldly rational thought that is the ideal of humanism represses our essential emotions and robs us of all that is human. He uses the changes in Raskolnikov's mental state to provide a human example of modernism's effect on man, placing emphasis upon the student's quest for forgiveness and the effect of repressed emotion.
to works which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex; which
It is apparent that the love between Sonia and Raskolnikov plays a crucial role in Crime and Punishment, pushing Raskolnikov in a direction he otherwise would not have gone. Dostoevsky uses their relationship as a tool to develop the philosophical themes in the novel and prompt profound changes in Raskolnikov’s character. Through their love, Dostoevsky demonstrates the importance of human relationships in finding and maintaining happiness. He also seeks to condemn nihilism and disprove the idea that one cannot make one’s own meaning in life by having Raskolnikov adopt Christian existentialism and find his purpose through Sonia.
When analyzing Freud’s psychosexual theory it is vital to note that he connected human drives to those of animals, thus indicating that these human drives can be broken down to a basic need for survival. Freud believed sexuality to be the most dominant biological force in determining human behavior. Freud’s theory becomes exceedingly convincing one is able to grasp the concept that his theories on sexuality and drive energy correspond more to drives and fulfillments rooted in bodily activity, than that of erotic stimulation or sexual satisfaction (Anderson & Taylor, 2007,