Main Characters

Anna Karenina

     "The power of love to make her several times to break through the barriers of the secular, to seek his own happiness, but a sense of selfishness and guilt immediately went to her side, her heart was filled with contradictions and pain."

        Anna is one of two protagonists in the novel. The most prominent qualities are her passionate spirite and determination to live life on her own term. She dares to face the St. Petersburg high society and refuses the exile to which she has been condemned. She used her whole life for seeking the freedom and happiness through love. She rejects Karenin’s request that she stay with him simply to maintain outward appearances of an intact marriage and family. She has her own idea and brave enough to try to stay with Vronsky, unlike many other the classes ladies, they live as prostitutes. 

            
           But she also pushed herself into death, she depends on love as the only reason for her living, when she feels the love has gone from her lover, she gets in desperation, which caused her mental illness, and she kills herself by train.
            
          As I said, Anna is one of two protagonists in the novel, there is a comparison between her and Konstantin Levin, they both in love but have the different ending.

Alexei Vronsky

        The wealthy and handsome military officer, who loves Anna deeply, until their affair forces him to give up the dream of career advancement, which disappoints Anna and the main reason that cause the death of Anna.

       

        He is a human who lives in the realistic world,  he is a typical playboy before he meets Anna. I believe he truly live Anna, but after some sweet month with Anna, he changes to a guy who feels disappointed with hard prospect because of Anna is the wife of Alexei Karenin, a high-social-status military administrator. 

        He is not a romantic super hero, but a guy who is locked into realistic society, although there is no evidence suggests his love to Anna changes any less at the end since the story doesn't really tell us about his mental thoughts. At least I can tell he occasionally feels pain with thwarted ambition, especially after he meets with the successful old school chum, his sentence vacillates Vronsky's mind, because his chum told him, women are nothing to the career. It made me think about the jilting of Kitty at the beginning, also he thinks husbands are pathetic, and he views marriage as a ridiculous social institution, which set the deathbed for Anna from beginning. Here is a comparison between Kitty and Anna, they meet the same person but have completely different endings.

Alexei Karenin

      The husband of Anna Karenina, who does not has personality at all. His life is enslaved by power and bureaucrat. Karenin lives in a strict schedule of work, dinner parties, reading time and speaks with his wife philosophically. He thinks everyone around him should match him, getting in clockwork life.
           
            Karenin has the most complicated mental world. When his wife cheats on him, he just ask her to act like his wife even they live seperately. And when Anna is dying because birthing Vronsky's child, Karenin gets back from far-away working place, he hopes his wife can get better? No, he hopes for death of his wife. But after he listens the sentence from Anna, he forgives them.


                Also, after Anna kills herself, he attends her funeral, and keeps her daughter with him. There is no responsibility forces him to raise Anna and another man's daughter. 

           We cannot judge them, there is no absolute right or wrong.