God Sees the Truth, but Waits

The story—actually a reworking of a story that one of Tolstoy’s characters, Platon Karataev, tells in War and Peace (Volume 4, Part 3, Chapter 13)—highlights Tolstoy’s increasing interest in religious and spiritual themes as his career progressed. The style is simple and unadorned, imparting its message about justice and forgiveness as a parable.

At the beginning of the story, Aksenov’s hedonistic and materialistic lifestyle—his drinking, his singing, and his pursuit of monetary gain—characterizes him as a shallow individual, an average sinner with little room in his life for God. When Aksenov marries and starts a family, he curbs some of his hedonistic pursuits—chiefly his drinking, which he gives up “except now and then” (117). However, Aksenov’s materialistic pursuits become, if anything, more pronounced. He focuses on his business interests while taking his family for granted. Thus, when Aksenov’s wife expresses her worries and asks him to delay his business trip, Aksenov dismisses her concerns, promising that he will sell all his goods and bring her back some presents.

What brings about Aksenov’s transformation is his harsh awakening to the injustice of human judgment. Aksenov is arrested by police officers who wrongly accuse him of murder without sufficient evidence. Aksenov’s conviction represents a failure of human judgment at the highest levels: Even the tsar, the chief executive and judicial authority in Russia, refuses to accept the petition Aksenov’s wife sends on her husband’s behalf. Aksenov’s punishment and his time in Siberia further underscore human institutional justice’s emphasis on bodily punishment as Aksenov is flogged and forced to work in the mines.

Aksenov soon realizes that human judgment is flawed. Devastated when he finds out that even his wife suspects him, Aksenov reflects that only God “can know the truth” and that it is “to Him alone we must appeal and from Him alone expect mercy” (119). Aksenov becomes deeply religious, praying often and giving up all temporal pleasures. Once a materialistic merchant prone to drinking, Aksenov becomes almost an ascetic. He devotes himself to divine justice, rejecting unjust human judgment.

The primary theme of the story, however, is forgiveness. When Aksenov meets Makar—the real murderer—he experiences an internal conflict. Because he has not given up the strongest of his earthly attachments—that is, his attachment to his family—Aksenov is consumed by anger and thoughts of revenge. Even after Aksenov decides not to report Makar’s plans to escape, he cannot forgive him. When Makar, clearly transformed by Aksenov’s act of compassion, offers to confess so that Aksenov can return home, Aksenov clings to his attachment to his family, lamenting that he has no home to return to. It is only as Makar weeps and begs for forgiveness that Aksenov completes his spiritual transformation. First, he realizes that only God can forgive, just as only God can judge. Second, he at last acknowledges himself as a sinner, admitting that he may be even worse than Makar. These realizations enable Aksenov to relinquish the strongest of his earthly attachments—the attachment to his family and even to his life—and to devote himself fully to God.