# Chapter II explained — A Confession > Chapter companion for A Confession by Leo Tolstoy. ## What happens The narrator reflects on his disillusionment with the literary world, recognizing the vanity, pride, and moral corruption among writers who claim to teach humanity while pursuing money and praise. He recounts his own youthful descent into debauchery and crime, and how he adopted the writers' creed as a justification for his dissolute life, only to later doubt its validity. ## Themes in this chapter ### Moral Corruption of Society The narrator describes the immorality and self-serving nature of writers and society, which praises vice and ignores virtue. ### Vanity of Worldly Success The pursuit of money, fame, and praise among writers is shown as hollow and ultimately meaningless. ### Selfishness and Self-Improvement The narrator's struggle between his desire to be good and the societal pressure to indulge in selfish passions. ## Character check-ins ### Narrator Reflects on his past life of debauchery, crime, and literary vanity, and his growing doubt about the writers' creed. ### Leo Tolstoy Implied as the authorial voice recounting his own experiences and moral struggles. ## Key lines > All this obliged me to doubt the validity of our creed. Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors’ creed itself, I also began to observe its priests more attentively, and I became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless character... This forced me to question the truth of our literary faith. As I examined its followers more closely, I saw that most writers were immoral and of poor character. _The narrator's growing disillusionment with the literary establishment._ > I killed men in war and challenged men to duels in order to kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labor of the peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely, and deceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder⁠—there was no crime I did not commit... I committed every kind of crime: killing in war and duels, gambling, exploiting peasants, lying, stealing, adultery, drunkenness, and violence. _The narrator's confession of his past immoral and criminal actions._ > Our real innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write books and papers. So we did that. Our true goal was to obtain money and praise, and the only way to achieve that was by writing books and articles. _The narrator's cynical view of the motivations behind literary work._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/a_confession_se/chapters/ii - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/a_confession_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/a_confession_se/chapters