A Good Question

     My friend John H asks if knowing what happens to Anna at the end of Anna Karenina, or rather, what she does, is a problem.  That’s a poser, really it is.  You see, it’s impossible to take up the book without knowing at least something about the Act Itself, for if you’re interested in the book at all you’ve most likely heard tell of it. 
     This isn’t really a problem, however, because the work isn’t simply a matter of suspense leading to a ‘will she or won’t she’ moment.  In fact, the wonder of Tolstoy’s rendition of that Act isn’t the Act itself, or any ’surprise’ it yields as such, but in the interior monologue of Anna herself that reveals the Act to be, in the end, practically motiveless. 
     One can of course pounce moralistically on all that supposedly led up to the Act, but there’s nothing to support any conclusion other than that she does it because she does it and that’s the end of it.  Even Tolstoy’s choice of epigram – ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, from Romans – is enigmatic and not without irony.  It’s far from clear that the Act is vengeance wrought from above – Vronsky’s various actions good and bad seem vengeance enough.
     What’s more, there are other stories intertwining with Anna’s, especially that of Levin’s marriage as set in counterpoint to the marriages of both Anna and Stepan Oblonsky.  Yes, it’s ‘about’ so much more than Anna’s enigmatic Act, though yes she is the presiding presence through the whole work. 
     So, in the end, knowing what happens isn’t a problem.  It’s not the Act itself, but what led up to it, all the mystery and intractability of such a motiveless self-destruction, that matters.  How Tolstoy revolutionized narrative in the telling of this, ‘anticipating’ [if such 'anticipation' ain't just an illusion] the interior monologue of Molly Bloom in Ulysses, for example – it’s a psychological and formal marvel of prose.  So read it.
     Peace out.