"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy

In Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina", the characters of Levin and Anna are devoured by their doubts and their inability to derive meaning from their lives. Their means of dealing with this existential doubt differ, however. Where Anna sees her life as a novel, a structured series of events that has form and in which she is in the hands of fate, Levin grapples with his inability to find any form at all to the disordered, …

…of the good which it is in my power to put into it!" Free from the yoke of external forces, Levin empowers himself with his own willpower to live for the good. Compare this to Anna's final prayer " 'Where am I? What am I doing? Why?' She wanted to rise, to throw herself back, but something huge and implacable pushed at her head and dragged over her. 'Lord, forgive me for everything!'" (p. 768)