📖 The Great Tolstoy Mission

📖 The Great Tolstoy Mission - Final Discussion

Last September, we opened War and Peace like people opening a refrigerator at 2 a.m. - curious, reckless, slightly overconfident. And 6 months later, we somehow… we actually finished it!

This is the final meetup where we talk about the entire novel (Volumes 1–4, and the Epilogue if you made it) and compare it to the War and Peace TV series (free to watch, just make an account - https://gem.cbc.ca/war-peace/s01).

This isn’t a “what happened” recap night. This is the payoff:
What did Tolstoy do to us? What did we learn about power, love, violence, history, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive?

What we’ll explore :

• Tolstoy vs “Great Men” history - did this book destroy the idea of heroic leaders, or just complicate it?

• Pierre, Natasha, Andrei - who actually changes, who doesn’t, and who thinks they changed

• Life as a machine - momentum, confusion, group psychology, the weird logic of events you can’t control

• Love, family, and social survival - what Tolstoy respects, what he punishes, what he laughs at

• Faith, meaning, and endurance - what counts as a “good life” after the fire

• Book vs TV series - what the adaptation makes clearer, what it softens, what it sharpens, and what it simply can’t do

How we’ll do it :

• Quick opening recap to get everyone on the same map (characters + timeline)
• Big prompts first (themes), then we zoom into specific character moments people bring up

TV series comparison: what it changes, what it highlights, what it leaves out
Final round: the one moment, line, or idea that you think explains the whole book

If you watched the TV series: one scene you think it nailed, and one you think it missed

When & where
🗓️ Sun, Feb 1st • 1:30 PM
📍 Vancouver Central Library — L4 North (492) Meeting Room
🎟️ Cap 12–15