Cloud, Calf, and Cannon: An Ecological Reading of War and Peace

abstract:This article engages in an ecocritical-spatial reading of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace focused on the narrator’s conscientious and equitable treatment of nature and animals. Where traditional historical-temporal readings tend to break the book into constituent elements, typically emphasizing Tolstoy’s historiography, this article offers a synthetic reading made possible by an often-overlooked ecological through-line. The author argues that the narrator formulates the biosphere, not just humans, as his object of interest and defines war as a result of humans acting unnaturally and failing to think ecologically. The author also employs close readings to show that war and nature emerge simultaneously in War and Peace and appear intentionally fused throughout, and that the book locates the practicability of war in soldiers subordinating each other as animals, which they deem inferior. The article concludes that the narrator’s thoughtful depiction of nature and sympathy for animals are core to the book’s rhetoric and form. To overlook these features is to overlook War and Peace.