FINALLY!!!!

So I am very pleased to announce that I have finally finished Anna Karenina!!! I finished it last night now that I have had a chance to think about it I think I have come up with a conclusion about what I think it means.

If you haven't read the book, it follows the lives of three different people. The first is Dolly and Stiva and she has only just found out that he has been having an affair. The second is about Stiva's sister Anna and her husband Alexei. Anna, after being quite taken with a young officer, Vronsky, realizes that she is no longer in love with her husband and in fact finds him quite repulsive. The third is the story about Levin who is a content farmer who falls in love with Kitty, who is in love with Vronsky.

Well, Stiva and Dolly somehow figure everything out and stay together, but are miserable together. Anna has an affair with Vronsky and leaves her husband and her son in the search of happiness, but in the end realizes that she will never be happy and throw herself under a train. Kitty and Levin eventually get married and have a child and Levin finds faith in a God he never believed in and becomes content with the world.

Obviously this is a very watered down version of the whole book, which is roughly 800 pages long but those three stories seemed to show to me one crucial thought. Its only when we have to fight for what we want to stay true to it, we can truely be happy. Stiva looked for happiness and satisfaction outside of his marriage and ended up miserable. Anna abandoned everything she had for something she thought she wanted and also ended up miserable and taking her own life. Only Kitty and Levin, who though they had their disagreements, worked together to solve them and were the only two that ended up happy.

I'm sure there was much more that could be pulled from the book but I really liked it and I'm proud that I have finally finished it!