# Chapter XXV explained — Anna Karenina

> Chapter companion for Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

## What happens

Konstantin Levin visits his consumptive and volatile brother Nikolay in a cheerless Moscow room. Nikolay passionately explains his plan for a productive locksmiths' association to liberate peasants from capitalist oppression, but Levin is more focused on his brother's deteriorating health and heavy drinking. The conversation turns to family, Sergey Ivanovitch's views, and Nikolay's bitterness about his wasted life. The chapter ends with Levin and Marya Nikolaevna getting the drunk Nikolay to bed.

## Themes in this chapter

### Isolation and Misunderstanding

Nikolay is physically and ideologically isolated, his passionate ideas met with Levin's pity rather than understanding. The brothers struggle to connect across a chasm of life choices and worldviews.

### Search for Meaning

Nikolay's fervent advocacy for the locksmiths' association is an 'anchor to save him from self-contempt' and a desperate attempt to give purpose to a life he feels he has 'made a mess of.'

### Family and Domesticity

The fraught brotherly bond is central. Levin's visit is driven by familial duty and pity. Nikolay's nostalgic questions about their childhood home reveal a longing for lost domestic stability.

## Character check-ins

### Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin

Visits his brother Nikolay, pained by his illness and erratic behavior. Tries to navigate the tense conversation, feeling pity and horror, and ultimately helps get Nikolay to bed.

### Nikolay Dmitrievitch Levin

Consumptive, volatile, and drinking heavily. Passionately advocates for his socialist locksmiths' association, rails against capitalism and his brother Sergey Ivanovitch, and expresses fear of death and regret for his wasted life.

### Marya Nikolaevna

Nikolay's companion for over a year. She quietly tends to him, reveals his drinking problem to Konstantin, and helps calm him and get him to bed, showing a patient, protective affection.

### Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev

Absent but a major point of contention. Nikolay fiercely attacks his intellectual views and article, seeing them as self-deceptive justifications for existing social evils.

## Key lines

> “You know that capital oppresses the laborer. The laborers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor... all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists.”

Nikolay articulates a Marxist critique, arguing capitalists exploit peasants by extracting the surplus value of their labor.

_Highlights the social critique and ideological divide between the brothers._

> “He’s no good either,” he said. “I see, of course.…”

After Kritsky leaves, Nikolay dismisses him as worthless, showing his pattern of alienating those around him.

_Illustrates Nikolay's bitterness and inability to sustain positive relationships._

> “I’m afraid of death, awfully afraid of death.”

Nikolay confesses a profound terror of mortality, shifting from political rage to raw personal fear.

_Reveals the vulnerability and despair beneath his ideological fervor._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/anna_karenina_se/chapters/part-i-xxv
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/anna_karenina_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/anna_karenina_se/chapters