Bambi, Anna Karenina, and Dramatic Irony

Bambi, Anna Karenina and Dramatic Irony 

When I was five years old, so the family story goes, my mother took me to see Walt Disney’s Bambi.  She must have read the Little Golden Book to me enough times that I knew the plot by heart.  The tension mounts.  Bambi’s  mother is killed by hunters.   The animals of the forest flee from the raging conflagration.   At that point in the movie, my mother recounts, I left my seat, walked down the aisle toward the flicker and crackle of the animated fire, saying, “Don’t worry, Bambi, your father will save you.”

I remember the story, not the experience, but something similar happened to me on my second reading of Anna Karenina.  While re-reading chapters XXI-XXVI and the intense sequence of scenes, I wanted to leave the safety of my armchair, step into the novel and warn Anna, “Don’t!” 

In a second reading, seated at the right hand of the omniscient author, I know what the scenes mean:  in the garden, when Vronsky watches radiant and pregnant Anna, I know the love child will not be loved;  during the steeplechase, when Anna watches Vronsky  take  the reins, causing the  mare to stumble and break her back, I know his  desire for control will  destroy what he loves most;  when overwrought Anna rides in  the carriage with her mechanical husband, I witness her reveal her deepest truth, “I hate you.  I love him,” and I know no good will come of it. Damn Tolstoy!  On a second reading I see he creates a world where I, at least, have to agree with Anna’s inevitable choice in chapter XXXI—throw yourself before an oncoming train.  

It’s human nature to want to know what the gods won’t tell us.  In a second reading, literature gives us what life does not.  My emotional experience is deepened precisely because I know how the novel  will “turn out.”

Lately, I find I am worrying too much about how things are going to “turn out.”  I suppose it’s my age. The worry has not translated into a “seize the day” attitude as much as an incipient fatalism, a belief that the script has been written.  I’m close to the end of the book, no matter what I do, or don’t do.