A Vehicle of Destruction

The novel Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, tells the story of an affair between a married woman, Anna Karenina, and Count Vronsky, and the destructive results of their relationship. Anna, who is married to a high government official, succumbs to her desire for the handsome young Vronsky; the two then proceed to have an open affair that the rest of high society looks down upon, thus putting their relations with most of their friends and family in ruin. By the end of the novel, the relationship between Anna and Vronsky has exhausted Anna to the core, which serves as the impetus for her committing suicide by throwing herself in front of a train. Tolstoy uses trains with a negative connotation throughout the novel as a vehicle to express the changes in society brought about by the new technology of the 19th century that has begun to pervade Russia. More literally, trains are symbolic of the turbulent relationship between Anna and Vronsky- a relationship that begins with a train, and ends with one as well.

During the 19th century, innovations in technology were making their way through Russia, which is symbolized by the incoming of trains as a new means of transportation. Before the technology brought about by the 19th century, Russia was primarily agricultural and more easy-going. With this technology came a thirst for hyper-efficiency and the degrading of native Russian tradition and practices, thus serving as Tolstoy's motivation to present trains with an overwhelmingly negative connotation. Anna herself complains about this new, overwhelming worklife when she complains to Vronsky that she will never see him anymore because he is working so much. This breakdown of traditional Russian life spurs Tolstoy to use trains, his symbol for technology, as a more literal symbol of Anna and Vronsky's ill-fated relationship.

The first time Vronsky sees Anna, they are at a train station. At this point, she is married and he is courting one of Anna's family friends. Vronsky is drawn to her, and she to him, which lays the groundwork for a controversial relationship. In fact, during their first meeting near the train tracks, they witness a worker get ran over by the train. Anna perceives this as a bad omen, yet pursues a relationship with Vronsky anyway. In fact the two do have a plethora of relationship problems- almost all of them burgeoning from the fact that Anna is already married to a powerful, prominent man and has a child. This confliction between her desire for a normal life with Vronsky and her desire to have a social life in which she will be accepted by her peers and be able to see her son make for an exhausting affair that wears both Vronsky and Anna down thin.

This exhaustion is what leads Anna to commit suicide- throwing herself in front of the train and dying just as the worker she and Vronsky had seen upon their first meeting. With her death, Vronsky is set free from the troubles of their relationship. Trains in this context serve as a much more literal symbol, as it is directly responsible for Anna's death. Although she jumped in front of the train with the intention to kill herself, she realizes as the train comes nearer that this is not what she wanted- she does not want to die; she wants to be with Vronsky. The train, however, which moves at fast, unfaltering speed, comes up quickly- her life is ended, her bad omen fulfilled.

Throughout the novel Tolstoy utilizes the symbol of trains as a negative image. The train symbolizes both the negative effects on Russian society brought about by technology of the 19th century and of the passionate, yet doomed relationship of Anna and Vronsky, as the train serves as both the beginning and the end of their love for one another. In any context, Tolstoy portrays the train in a bad light and therefore uses the train to symbolize a ill-fated relationship.