Happy Feet

War & Peace | Week 42 | Contains spoilers up to Volume 4 Book 2 Chapter 16

Russian prisoners of war in 1812 by Faber du Faur

First thoughts

Once upon a time, I stood on a snake.

The snake bit my foot and my foot swelled up. The poison went to war on my blood and though my blood would win, I was a few weeks mending, in hospital, in bed, and in a house above the clouds.

The house was in Ecuador and the clouds were a forest. I was looking for peace and I found Pierre.

Pierre Bezukhov. I had brought the biggest book I could find, six thousand miles across jungle and sea. It was 2007 and I was reading War and Peace for the first time.

Can fictional characters become friends?

This bumbling bear of a man was mine. He was a little older, but none the wiser. He was searching and so was I. We were both lost in the world.

Like Pierre, I got angry. At others, but mostly myself. At my own foolishness and thoughts, running like horses in different directions.

I read War and Peace when I couldn't walk. My useless foot, bandaged up in bed. I was angry at myself, the snake and the universe for putting me there. And not thankful enough that I was still there at all.

Pierre is still here. He survived a duel, the deadliest battle in history, and a fire that consumed all Moscow. They locked him up and put him in front of a firing squad. He survived that too.

A prisoner of war, he considers his feet. He's lost his shoes – stolen or given away, he doesn't say. They're gone. Which is not good timing if the army takes him marching out of Russia. No wonder his new mentor Platon is busy gathering linen to bind their feet.

Pierre's not a practical man (neither am I). He's admiring his big dirty toes. His eyes are calm and resolute, like never before.

He shouldn't be happy. He's lost his freedom, his friends and his country. But here beneath him are two feet and ten toes. His body. His life. The thing he is. He looks at a lavender dog who knows something most of us forget.

He searched and searched for life's meaning. In mysteries and great men. In struggle and self-improvement. But the truth was always there beneath him. The universe and his two feet.

"All that is me, all that is within me, and it is all I."

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Character cheat sheet

Platon Karataev Magic Potato Man is still with Pierre, and our hero should thank his lucky stars: the peasant philosopher has more than kind words for the universe. He’s busy collecting scraps of linen to make footwear for the prisoners. It’s all very well admiring your feet Pierre, but you’ve got a long walk ahead of you…

Ivan Semyonovich Dorokhov I know, I know, we’re all expecting Denisov to pop up any day now. Or maybe Dolokhov. But if wishes were horses, Nikolai Rostov would have the best stables in Russia. And meanwhile, we have to contend with Dorokhov and Dokhturov.

Dorokhov is a General Lieutenant active in disrupting the supply lines of the French and is the first to notice that the French had withdrawn from Moscow. You can read more about him here.

Dmitry Dokhturov An infantry general whom Tolstoy compares to a “small connecting cog-wheel which revolves quietly” and “is one of the most essential parts of the machine.” He was the last general in the rearguard at Austerlitz, rescuing 8,000 men and leaving the artillery behind. Tolstoy is a fan.

Pyotr Konovnitsyn Tolstoy also has positive things to say about Kutusov’s right-hand man Konovnitsyn. Like the one-eyed commander-in-chief, he likes his sleep, distrusts intelligence and follows his instincts:

He regarded the whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his reason but by something else. There was within him a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one’s own work. And he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.

Discussion Questions

1. Why is Pierre content, and why does he laugh when he is prevented from crossing over to the common soldiers?

2. Pierre reasons that the troubles of the world “were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge concerning them, and therefore could not do so.” Is he right?

3. Can Pierre’s happiness last?

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