Resurrection is one man’s story of atonement for a sin committed in his youth. Partly based on a true story and partly autobiographical, the story tells of Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov’s attempt to make amends to Katerina Maslova (Katusha), whom he seduces and abandons, as he considers himself to be the primary cause of her moral degradation and physical suffering. Seeing her years later as a jury member, and being partly responsible for the careless verdict that causes a miscarriage of justice, Nekhlyudov makes it his mission to seek justice for her and to redress this unfair sentence. While taking this course of action, Nekhlyudov realizes that it was not the criminal justice system that was guilty towards her but himself. It was Nekhlyudov’s much-needed awakening that caused him to reevaluate the life he previously led in idle debauchery.
The novel is a strong attack on the criminal justice system. The miscarriage of justice was only a tool for Tolstoy to probe into the defects and abuses of power within the institutions that exercised criminal justice. It also allowed Tolstoy to expose the appalling conditions of the prisons and the degradations to which prisoners were subjected. This revelation is truly shocking. It looks as if the Russian criminal justice system was running on the whims and fancies of the upper-class men who thought it just to condemn those who were not on par with them, either in class or in views.
The main storyline of Katusha and Nekhlyudov is based on a true account that Tolstoy heard from a lawyer friend. The injustice of this true story and his youthful life of debauchery inspired the indignant and remorseful Tolstoy to create this sensitive story. Having turned towards a spiritual life, Tolstoy may have felt the need for self-atonement.
Resurrection is both a story and a social commentary. While the main story portrays the shallowness of the idle upper-class nobility and their sickening misconduct towards those below them in class, it also exposes the judicial and social injustice, especially towards the lower classes, and bureaucratic callousness in general. Tolstoy brings out all these with much power and in detail. When he tells the story of Katusha, her sufferings, her fall in society, he tells it with warmth. Only when he attacks the unjust criminal justice system, the ignorant and callous bureaucrats, and the system of governance in general, does he tend to be preachy.
However powerful the theme and sensitive the story were, the novel failed to engross me fully. The reason could be either his preachy tone that disturbed the warmth of the story or the social commentary that overrode the storyline. It could also be due to my not understanding Nekhlyudov’s resurrection fully. Tolstoy failed here to convince me that he was, in truth, “resurrected”, that he had truly altered his lifestyle. Throughout the story, one can see him wavering. Call me sentimental, but the very fact that Katusha and Nekhlyudov weren’t united gave the impression that Nekhlyudov was not fully committed to the path of redemption. And even though Tolstoy stresses it as Katusha’s decision, and that she didn’t accept his sacrifice out of love for him, it sounded like a lame excuse to my ears. I couldn’t help feeling that Tolstoy’s attempt at absolving Nekhlyudov was somehow not successful.
Rating: 3/5
