A Confession · Chapters
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Chapter companions for A Confession by Leo Tolstoy.
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Chapter 1
I
The narrator describes his upbringing in the Orthodox Christian faith and his gradual loss of belief, beginning in childhood and crystallizing by age eighteen. He recounts how religious doctrine was merely an external formality among his social circle, easily discarded under the influence of knowledge and experience. He reflects on the story of S., whose faith evaporated after a single comment from his brother, and confesses that his own youthful faith was replaced by a belief in self-perfection, which eventually devolved into a desire for fame, wealth, and power over others.
Chapter 2
Chapter II
The narrator reflects on his disillusionment with the literary world, recognizing the vanity, pride, and moral corruption among writers who claim to teach humanity while pursuing money and praise. He recounts his own youthful descent into debauchery and crime, and how he adopted the writers' creed as a justification for his dissolute life, only to later doubt its validity.
Chapter 3
III
Tolstoy describes his six years of living according to the faith of 'progress' after his brother's death and a trip abroad, including a visit to Paris where witnessing an execution shook his belief. He recounts his work with peasant schools, his return to Russia as an Arbiter after the emancipation, his marriage, and the subsequent fifteen years of family life and writing for material gain. The chapter culminates in the onset of existential questions—'What is it for? What does it lead to?'—that grow into a profound crisis, leading him to realize that without answers he cannot live.
Chapter 4
IV
The narrator describes his existential crisis and suicidal despair, realizing that life is meaningless and that all pursuits—family, art, success—are deceptions in the face of inevitable death. He uses the fable of the traveller, dragon, and mice to illustrate his predicament, and confesses he hid a rope and stopped hunting to avoid suicide.
Chapter 5
V
The narrator describes his desperate search for the meaning of life across all branches of knowledge, finding that neither experimental nor abstract sciences provide a satisfactory answer to the question of why one should live in the face of inevitable death. He concludes that science either ignores the question or merely restates it, leaving him in despair.
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