Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

In Part 2, Chapter 25, there's a major turning point in the novel: Vronsky goes riding on a steeplechase in competition with a bunch of other men in his regiment. His horse Frou-Frou (who Vronsky calls "sweetheart" and "lovely") is a high-spirited young mare, eager to get out there into the mix and show those other horses what's what. But as Vronsky's riding, he makes a mistake that trips up Frou-Frou. She falls and breaks her back while he manages to escape uninjured. Now, in terms of the plot, what's important about this scene is that Anna and Karenin are both attending the race, and Anna's visible concern at Vronsky's fall tips off Karenin, at last, that she really is having an affair.

What's important about the scene symbolically is that it foreshadows what's going to happen to Anna herself. Vronsky is absolutely taken with the horse, but his love of her doesn't prevent him from doing something that ruins her forever – he misjudges where he's put his weight as Frou-Frou is gearing up to jump, and she breaks her back. This is similar to his relationship with Anna. Vronsky loves Anna, but he convinces her to have an affair with him, which destroys her. Vronsky's great tragic flaw is that he's capable of deep love, but he's just not that careful, and his lack of care has terrible consequences for the women (or female horses) with whom he gets involved.

This was made clear in Lawrence University's production of Anna Karenina.

"Trains are the most important symbols in the story of Anna Karenina, due to their prominence in the Anna/Vronsky story line. More specifically, trains are a destructive element throughout the novel. Vronsky and Anna first meet at a train station, where a drunken guard is crushed to death. Madame Kalinina (Elaine Gajewski) grieves her loss.  Anna calls the death an omen of evil. Her first encounter with Vronsky is thus overlaid with the specter of death. In some sense, Anna fulfills her own premonition by choosing suicide via train. Vronsky too uses a train as the engine of his death, as it carries him to a war where he is determined to die. The train motif thus brackets the novel in a negative light."  It may symbolize the hidden or destructive side of modern society (e.g. everything is destructive or has some hidden cost).

"It's possible to go further with the train symbolism – that trains not only destroy Anna and Vronsky, but Russia's old way of life, in favor of an industrial capitalist system. You can also think about the idea of trains as transportation, and draw a parallel to Anna being transported by love away from her duties and responsibilities as Madame Karenina."

t may not seem significant the first time around, but if you re-read the very first train scene when Anna meets Vronsky (with whom she is having an affair), you'll note that a peasant (a.k.a. a muzhik) appears on the train station platform carrying a sack (1.17.35). And then, you'll remember that, several times throughout the book, Anna has terrifying dreams of a peasant with a matted beard and a sack over his shoulder working over some iron and speaking in incomprehensible French. Even Vronsky has the dream once. So what's going on with this image?

It's possible that Anna (and we, the readers) glimpses this peasant in the first train scene and associates him with the drunken guard's death via train. Anna might, in turn, link this image to Vronsky (because of his gift of money to the guard's family to impress Anna). Anna's recurring, terrifying dreams of the peasant grow out of the fact that he represents both Vronsky and death, both of which, increasingly, she believes she deserves.

This symbolic dream does, in fact, come true. When Anna arrives at the train station where she will take her life in Part 7, she sees a peasant working over some iron just before the train actually runs her over. This peasant is associated with "the impossibility of any struggle" (7.31.21). We could interpret this to mean that from the instant when Anna first met Vronsky, on the train, her suicide has been her fate. The peasant becomes another way of signaling to the reader that Anna's story has come full circle, and that, from the moment that her heart started to wander towards Vronsky in that early scene, she has been doomed.(shmoop.com/anna-karenina)

Works Cited