3 ms·

Quoting Tolstoy may seem low effort, but it feels warranted here: "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

twelve40 4y ago
I heard this phrase many times, but I really don't understand what it means. Aside from being stated in extremely dogmatic form - like a claim to the ultimate truth - what, exactly, do we learn from this statement? To me (aside from being probably just an incorrect artistic exaggeration), it sounds like something ridiculously trivial, like "all people live different lives, but everyone dies" (ok, so what?) or "we all like different foods but all of us have to breathe air" (truly a genius observation). Is there some deeper meaning to this that I'm missing?
- ca98am79 4y ago
  When I first heard this quote it really resonated with me. I think what it means is that unhappy relationships usually take on specific forms, while happy relationship are more generalized.
  - JeremyNT 4y ago
    This is how I always understood it as well, with a bit of an added connotation that the supposed "happy family" doesn't even exist as such. We all can easily see our own particular versions of familial dysfunction, yet we can still look at "happy families" from the outside and assume that they have achieved some platonic ideal that our own family is incapable of. There isn't really a "happy family" in Ana Karenina, not as such anyway - there are many different characters struggling with their own stations in life in different ways, even being miserable once they seem to achieve their near term goals. Probably the closest you can get is Levin's self actualization at the end of the novel, but I personally take a pessimistic read on that too - we've seen him spend the entire book meandering and I have trouble reading it at face value that he's really done "settling" on his world view by the end.
- deleted 4y ago
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cafard 4y ago
A great first line for a novel, but perhaps not really so.

twelve40 4y ago

I heard this phrase many times, but I really don't understand what it means. Aside from being stated in extremely dogmatic form - like a claim to the ultimate truth - what, exactly, do we learn from this statement? To me (aside from being probably just an incorrect artistic exaggeration), it sounds like something ridiculously trivial, like "all people live different lives, but everyone dies" (ok, so what?) or "we all like different foods but all of us have to breathe air" (truly a genius observation). Is there some deeper meaning to this that I'm missing?

ca98am79 4y ago
When I first heard this quote it really resonated with me. I think what it means is that unhappy relationships usually take on specific forms, while happy relationship are more generalized.
- JeremyNT 4y ago
  This is how I always understood it as well, with a bit of an added connotation that the supposed "happy family" doesn't even exist as such. We all can easily see our own particular versions of familial dysfunction, yet we can still look at "happy families" from the outside and assume that they have achieved some platonic ideal that our own family is incapable of. There isn't really a "happy family" in Ana Karenina, not as such anyway - there are many different characters struggling with their own stations in life in different ways, even being miserable once they seem to achieve their near term goals. Probably the closest you can get is Levin's self actualization at the end of the novel, but I personally take a pessimistic read on that too - we've seen him spend the entire book meandering and I have trouble reading it at face value that he's really done "settling" on his world view by the end.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

cafard 4y ago

A great first line for a novel, but perhaps not really so.