War and Peace

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1867

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Epilogue, Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4 Summary

The narrator reflects on the roles of individuals in history. The purpose of studying history is to create a coherent narrative from this incredibly complicated tangle. The narrator asks what causes historical events—what force moves nations. The study of history focuses on answering these questions through specific points of view, typically focusing on supposedly great men like the king or military leaders. Alternatively, historians discuss states’ relations to one another. However, both of these approaches are inadequate—they fail to acknowledge the complexity of reality. One example is the French Revolution: How could a movement for the rights of the common people descend into so much bloodshed if not for the random chances that led to this slaughter?

Chapters 5-7 Summary

The narrator explains the correct way to examine history. Studying biographies of great men is not adequate; believing in the inherent power of a government is limited; and standard historical accounts fail to acknowledge the agency of millions of people involved in the course of events. History simply cannot be adequately explained through limited, reductionist stories about a few dozen individuals.

The narrator does accept that certain individuals have an outsized influence on history. Napoleon issued orders that many people obeyed; the invasion of Russia was the result of such an order. However, an order is always far removed from its actual effects. He did not direct the invasion, which was instead the result of hundreds of thousands of people reacting to their immediate situations. A leader can only truly influence a small number of men, who in turn influence other men. Events function like the chain of command in the military: Individuals pass on responsibility, information, and action the way orders pass from officer to soldier.

The passage of time also influences history. Officers, commanders, and soldiers are only ever in the middle of an event that is unfolding, so they can never truly control all its aspects. Thus, any historian who points to a single moment or decision as the cause of any event is mistaken. History is subjected to many competing influences, like a log that men drag through a forest, all with different ideas of where it should go. The log (and history) will ultimately end up in a specific place that may correspond with one individual’s plans, but this does not mean that all men worked toward this goal. Rather, the log’s location (and the reality of historical events) is the culmination of many competing influences, combined with random chance and opportunity.

Chapters 8-12 Summary

The narrator questions how fate and destiny affect human existence. Free will is a myth. However, if people do not believe in free will, then human activities become meaningless. Trying to imagine total free will is almost impossible, just as it is almost impossible to imagine a totally coherent and explicable version of history.

The narrator ultimately believes that humans rely on a power they do not truly understand. People recognize that their freedom is indispensable, but they also realize that they are cogs in a much greater machine—a force that moves their lives forward. As human culture and society evolves and grows, the narrator believes that the study of history and humanity’s understanding of the world will become more nuanced and accurate.

Epilogue, Part 2 Analysis

The second epilogue abandons the pretext of a fictional novel and turns toward nonfiction. Tolstoy’s detailed essay explores complicated ideas about historiography. This is not the first time that the novel includes a nonfiction argument. Similar examples are scattered through War and Peace, though the dense, abstract nature of this nonfiction section separates it from everything that came before. However, this closing essay is key to understanding the novel.

War and Peace is a historical novel that addresses the study of history, specifically aiming to disprove the “great man” theory of causality that was popular at the time the novel was published (and persists in modern historical biographies). The great man theory suggests that certain individuals are powerful, intelligent, or fortunate enough to move historical events on their own. This idea was used to explain the rise of Napoleon. Tolstoy believes that this theory is flawed because history is the result of the actions of many individuals who do things for a variety of reasons. So-called great men are the products of history, not the cause of it.

The epilogue’s argumentation leads Tolstoy to declare that free will is an illusion—his image of history as a huge machine seems to imply that its motion is a foregone conclusion. The narrator’s closing words seem to undermine the portrayal of the characters in the novel. Pierre, Nikolai, Marya, and Natasha undergo suffering to learn that they must take responsibility for themselves. In explaining his complicated, obtuse, and seemingly contradictory interpretations of history, Tolstoy transcends the lives of the characters, leaving the reader with the same contradictions, uncertainties, and doubts they’ve just read about.