A Confession · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in A Confession by Leo Tolstoy.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
Narrator
major
Also known as I, myself, mine
He moves through drawing rooms, regimental camps, and editorial offices as a man others praise, yet he cannot stop auditing his own conduct and finding it fraudulent. His sharpest quarrel is not with society but with himself: he wrote to be admired, taught without knowing what, and now suspects the whole enterprise was a lunatic asylum. That self-interrogation is the engine of the book — every early anecdote is evidence in a trial whose verdict he does not yet know.
Solomon
minor
Also known as a Solomon
Biblical king referenced for his wisdom and pessimistic reflections on life's vanity.
Schopenhauer
minor
German philosopher whose pessimistic worldview influences the narrator's crisis.
Leo Tolstoy
major
Also known as Tolstoy
He is the celebrated author whom Petersburg salons flatter and whose name opens doors, yet the memoir strips the laurels off in public. He confesses to killing in war, ruining peasants, and hiding goodness in his fiction to win praise, and he refuses to let his reputation soften the account. This candor matters because the book's authority rests on his willingness to indict himself first — the reader trusts the inquiry only because the inquirer spares himself nothing.
Christ
supporting
He is the standard the narrator measures himself against as he returns to the Orthodox Church, attending services, keeping the fasts, and repeating the prayers with deliberate attention. The tension is that the words of the liturgy — love one another, resurrection, the sacraments — either dissolve into meaninglessness or demand a belief he cannot honestly give. His presence defines the book's central struggle: whether faith can be lived without self-deception, and what remains when the answer is no.
Dmitriy
minor
Also known as himself
A peasant or acquaintance who offers simple faith as a counterpoint to the narrator's doubt.
Buddha
minor
Founder of Buddhism, discussed as an example of a path to escape suffering.
Sakya Muni
minor
Also known as himself
The historical Buddha, whose story of renunciation is examined by the narrator.
