Assignment topic: three questions by Leo Tolstoy

Submitted by: RABEEA ASLAM

BS 3rd semester
Roll no 1903
Submitted to: Ma’am ASMA

Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote the acclaimed novels 'War and Peace,' 'Anna
Karenina' and 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich,' and ranks among the world's top writers.
Who Was Leo Tolstoy?

In the 1860s, Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote his first great novel, War and Peace. In 1873,
Tolstoy set to work on the second of his best-known novels, Anna Karenina. He continued to
write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. One of his most successful later works was The
Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Early Life

On September 9, 1828, writer Leo Tolstoy was born at his family's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in
the Tula Province of Russia. He was the youngest of four boys. When Tolstoy's mother died in
1830, his father's cousin took over caring for the children. When their father, Count Nikolay
Tolstoy, died just seven years later, their aunt was appointed their legal guardian. When the aunt
passed away, Tolstoy and his siblings moved in with a second aunt, in Kazan, Russia. Although
Tolstoy experienced a lot of loss at an early age, he would later idealize his childhood memories
in his writing.

Tolstoy received his primary education at home, at the hands of French and German tutors. In
1843, he enrolled in an Oriental languages program at the University of Kazan. There, Tolstoy
failed to excel as a student. His low grades forced him to transfer to an easier law program. Prone
to partying in excess, Tolstoy ultimately left the University of Kazan in 1847, without a degree.
He returned to his parents' estate, where he made a go at becoming a farmer. He attempted to
lead the serfs, or farmhands, in their work, but he was too often absent on social visits to Tula
and Moscow. His stab at becoming the perfect farmer soon proved to be a failure. He did,
however, succeed in pouring his energies into keeping a journal — the beginning of a lifelong
habit that would inspire much of his fiction.

As Tolstoy was flailing on the farm, his older brother, Nikolay, came to visit while on
military leave. Nikolay convinced Tolstoy to join the Army as a junker, south in the
Caucasus Mountains, where Nikolay himself was stationed. Following his stint as a junker,
Tolstoy transferred to Sevastopol in Ukraine in November 1854, where he fought in the
Crimean War through August 1855.

Early Works

During quiet periods while Tolstoy was a junker in the Army, he worked on an
autobiographical story called Childhood. In it, he wrote of his fondest childhood memories.
In 1852, Tolstoy submitted the sketch to The Contemporary, the most popular journal of the
time. The story was eagerly accepted and became Tolstoy's very first published work.

After completing Childhood, Tolstoy started writing about his day-to-day life at the Army
outpost in the Caucasus. However, he did not complete the work, entitled The Cossacks, until
1862, after he had already left the Army.

Tolstoy still managed to continue writing while at battle during the Crimean War. During
that time, he composed Boyhood (1854), a sequel to Childhood, the second book in what was
to become Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy. In the midst of the Crimean War, Tolstoy also
expressed his views on the striking contradictions of war through a three-part
series, Sevastopol Tales. In the second Sevastopol Tales book, Tolstoy experimented with a
relatively new writing technique: Part of the story is presented in the form of a soldier's
stream of consciousness.

Death and Legacy

Unfortunately, the pilgrimage proved too arduous for the aging novelist. In November 1910,
the stationmaster of a train depot in Astapovo, Russia opened his home to Tolstoy, allowing
the ailing writer to rest. Tolstoy died there shortly after, on November 20, 1910. He was
buried at the family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in Tula Province, where Tolstoy had lost so
many loved ones yet had managed to build such fond and lasting memories of his childhood.
Tolstoy was survived by his wife and their brood of 8 children. (The couple had spawned 13
children in all, but only 10 had survived past infancy.)

To this day, Tolstoy's novels are considered among the finest achievements of literary
work. War and Peace is, in fact, frequently cited as the greatest novel ever written. In
contemporary academia, Tolstoy is still widely acknowledged as having possessed a gift for
describing characters' unconscious motives. He is also championed for his finesse in
underscoring the role of people's everyday actions in defining their character and purpose.
Analysis of Leo Tolstoy’s “Three Questions”
at the core of the Buddha’s enlightenment there was the realization of the Four Noble Truths,
Tolstoy’s story of  Three Questions puts forth fundamental reality of life.
While working on the later parts of his life, Tolstoy began experiencing bouts of depression,
which at times were so severe that he considered suicide. He was tormented by the need to find a
meaning for his life that would not be annihilated by death. His Ispoved’ (1882; A
Confession, 1885) describes this spiritual struggle and the solution he found: to practice what he
saw as the essence of Christianity—that is, universal love and passive resistance to evil. A series
of religious writings amplified this new faith. In these, he urged people to live according to the
dictates of conscience, which meant practicing universal love and living as far as possible by
their own labor. He also declared all forms of violence equally wrong, including war and the
compulsion that the state uses against its citizens.

His Three Questions wrote about of moral philosophy. He wrote Three Questions based on fairy

tales or religious legends. Written in a simple but expressive style, it is intended to convey his
idea of ethical Christianity and expanded Buddhism. Tolstoy himself tried to abide by his new
beliefs, simplifying his life, living on his own labor, and giving up material possessions.

As the story of Three Questions goes, a certain King yearns to know the answer for his three
questions namely, the right time to begin everything, the right people to listen to and the most
important thing to do. The king wants to be successful in all his endeavors and so he takes
immense interest in gathering the right resources in terms of right time, right person whom he
could consult and the right order of priority to carry out the work.

The King out of his curiosity to know answers for his three questions visits the hermit living in a
forest.  The King helped the hermit by digging the ground because the hermit being an old man
got tired of digging. Every time he stuck the earth with his spade, he scooped little earth and
breathed heavily due to exhaustion. The situation warrants that the king has to extend his stay
with the hermit. As the sun sets, a bearded man came out of the bushes with a severe wound in
his stomach. The King cleaned and bandaged the wound. The bearded man had come to kill the
king and got wounded by the king’s bodyguards. Had not the king bandaged the wound he would
have bled to death. Though the king saved the man’s life without knowledge about his intentions
the bearded man as a token of gratitude decides to forgo the enmity and be a faithful slave to the
king. The king was very glad for having made peace with his enemy. He forgave him and
promised to restore his property and also arranged for his own servants and physicians to attend
on him.

The hermit interprets these two events.  Had not the King taken pity on the old hermit and helped
him dig he would got killed on the way home. Then the king would have regretted for not
staying back. Therefore, the most important time was the time the king was digging, and the
most important person was the hermit who was with the king and the most important pursuit was
to help the hermit. Later, when the wounded man was tended to, the most important time was the
time spent in dressing his wounds and for if the king had not cared for him he would have died
and the king would have lost the chance to make peace with him. Likewise the most important
pursuit was taking care of the wound.  The hermit invites the emperor to reflect on his recent
experience and see how it is a perfect backdrop to form answers to his questions.

According to the Hermit, the most important thing one should do is to do good to people whom
we are with at that moment. The King did well to both the Hermit and the wounded man. The
most important time is the present moment, as the present is the only time over which we have
power. The most important person is whoever one is with. The most important thing is to do well
to the person one is with. The most important pursuit is making that person happy and that
should be the pursuit of one’s life. As Buddha applied the experimental approach to questions of
ultimate truth, the hermit answered the king likewise.
The end