On Nekhlyudov's Ethical Knots

Tolstoy (?), a great literary master of Critical Realism in Russia in the 19th century, is considered one of the two everlasting monuments in the realm of Critical Realism. Tolstoy's master works include War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection, autobiographic novel triology (Childhood, Juvenile, and Youth) and so on. Among all these works, Resurrection is the most celebrated. During the ten years of writing Resurrection, Tolstoy's world review had greatly changed since he discarded noble tradition and surveyed social phenomena critically from the perspective of rural patriarchal clan system. Therefore he was entitled "the soberest talented artist" of realism by Lenin.This paper's focus is to study the ethical knot of Nekhlyudov, the hero of Resurrection, through analyzing the reason of his ethical knot, how he unlocked the ethical knot, the result and the implication of the result.This paper is composed of three chapters. The first chapter presents terms of literary ethics and research background, and provides a deeper understanding of Resurrection by illustrating relevant terms of literary ethics and the author's thoughts background. The second chapter focuses on the ethical knot of Nekhlyudov and its causes. The last chapter mainly talks about how Nekhlyudov unlocked his ethical knot, how he saved himself during the process of saving others, how his thoughts changed when unlocking the ethical knot, the result and the implication of the result.The conclusion is that to dispel bitterness and preserve happiness. That is 2to say: every human being, both in fictitious world and real world, is trying to find the way out of problems and purify one's spirit till its harmonization with the world around; and even though one cannot completely achieve the harmonization, in some way one will get rid of his inner torture and run after his inner harmony.