# A Confession — Chapters explained

> Chapter companions for A Confession by Leo Tolstoy.

- [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/i.md): 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 fo
- [Chapter II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/ii.md): 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 you
- [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/iii.md): 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 
- [IV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/iv.md): 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 t
- [V](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/v.md): 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 shoul

> 12 more chapter companions — [open a free preview](https://www.betterreads.dev/reader?bookId=a_confession_se_580kb&preview=1) to unlock the rest.

- [VI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/vi.md)
- [VII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/vii.md)
- [VIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/viii.md)
- [IX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/ix.md)
- [Chapter X](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/x.md)
- [Chapter XI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/xi.md)
- [XII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/xii.md)
- [XIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/xiii.md)
- [XIV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/xiv.md)
- [Chapter XV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/xv.md)
- [XVI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/xvi.md)
- [Endnotes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/endnotes.md)

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_confession_se/chapters