The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [98]
Cast on a much grander scale, another novel of the period shaped by the Comedy plot was Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1868). Among all the dozens of characters we meet in the opening chapters are four young people, all on the verge of embarking on the wider stage of the world. First there is the huge, awkward, introverted Pierre. Then, in the Rostov family, there are young Nikolai, extrovertedly looking forward to his career in the army, and his lively younger sister Natasha, Finally there is the shy, spiritual Maria, living at home in the country wtth her old father, the retired general Prince Bolkonsky. These are the main heroes and heroines of the story; although we must also include Maria's brother, the rather older Prince Andrew, already married and out on the stage of the world as a fast-rising young officer.
There is no doubt who occupies the role of chief dark figure in the story. The self-created Emperor Napoleon looms up like a distant cloud on the horizon in the opening line of the book. His insatiable ambition casts an ever-growing shadow over everyone, first coming to a head in the great confrontation between the Russians and the French in Austria in 1805 (although this is still at a reasonably comfortable distance from Russia itself); but finally, with the invasion of 1812, bursting right into the heart of Russia and the lives of all the main characters.
Across all this vast canvas and tumult of great events, what binds the whole narrative together is the working out of the destinies of the central four figures, with Prince Andrew, through every kind of misunderstanding, uncertainty and switch of love. We follow Pierre through the death of his father, his disastrous marriage to the temptress Helene Kuragin, his long and painful inner journey to discover `the meaning of life. We follow Nikolai through his adolescent love for little Sonia, and his character-forming adventures as an army officer. We see little Natasha blossoming into an adult, `active' heroine, falling in love with Prince Andrew after the death of his wife, getting engaged to him and then falling into the disastrous folly of her infatuation with the unscrupulous fortune-hunter Anatole Kuragin. We have earlier seen the Princess Maria rejecting a cynical offer of marriage from the same dark figure, before sinking into a long `passive' eclipse under the shadow of her tyrannical old father, imagining she will always remain a spinster.
Then comes Borodino and Napoleon's occupation of burning Moscow, the moment when darkness seems complete and all the characters are hurled about, willy-nilly, in the book's climactic episode of confusion. Pierre, who has already begun to sense a growing love for Natasha, is plunged into an `inferior realm', firstly through his wandering about occupied Moscow in humble disguise, then through his hardships on the long march westward as a prisoner of war, daily expecting death, although it is in these depths that he meets the old peasant Platon whose wisdom transforms his life. Nikolai, in the chaos of the retreat to Moscow, meets and gives assistance to Princess Maria, before plunging into the further chaos of the ensuing battles. Natasha, in the chaos of the Rostovs' flight from Moscow, is reconciled with the dying Prince Andrew; and then begins to realise that she loves Pierre. Princess Maria, after her eventful meeting with Nikolai, begins to emerge from the shadow of her tyrannical old father, and realises that she loves Nikolai.
Finally the much greater shadow which has fallen over all of them begins to lift, when Napoleon orders the retreat from Moscow. With gathering pace, the chief dark figure of the story, with his