Man is Nothing
It’s November 2020 and the night of the US Presidential Election.
I’m lying in bed and I can’t sleep.
It feels like this result will predict the fate of the rest of the world, how it may or may not still have hope left in it, and how we’re going to deal with the fact that half of the population of one of the biggest countries in the world just voted for fascism. What good can a single person do against this rising tide of hatred and vitriol, regardless of who ends up coming out on top?
The only thing that can stop me from descending into an uncontrollable panic attack is thinking about essays that I would want to write about a book that I’d recently finished: Anna Karenina. Don’t ask me how I got there — because I genuinely don’t remember — but it was working.
I went through each of the primary characters in my head, laying out their character arcs and thinking about what details of their journey I could connect to. What I thought each of them could say to me to calm me down in this moment.
Then I reached Konstantin Levin.
To most people who pick up Anna Karenina, you expect to spend your time with its titular character. Her story is about her affair that ends her unhappy marriage, before running off into the countryside to live with her new partner, spiralling into a pit of depression and eventually throwing herself in front of a train. It’s all very dramatic.
You therefore might not expect Levin’s story about a Russian aristocrat’s exploration of a farmer’s life to be particularly interesting. But it’s 3:30 am on November 4th and I can’t stop thinking about bloody Konstantin Levin.
Levin is a member of the Russian elite who owns a farming complex. He dreams about marrying the youngest daughter in the highly-regarded Shcherbatsky family: Kitty. After his proposal is rejected, he too finds himself in the middle of a depressive episode and begins to try on a bunch of skins, one of which involves joining the hard-labour life of his employees. When Kitty eventually changes her mind and marries him, it doesn’t stop him from exploring his uncertainty about his place in the world.
He thinks of himself as an intellectual; a member of high society with big ideas and dreams that are going to revolutionise the farming industry. He’s part of roundtable discussions at societal dinner parties where he’s the delight of all. The only stopper is that this doesn’t match up with how he appears to the rest of the world.
Whenever we see Levin from another character’s perspective, he’s portrayed as bumbling, socially awkward, and unable to easily read social situations. Someone who always plans the right thing to say, but it somehow always ends up being the wrong thing. Levin only recognises this insofar as he feels a disconnect, where he’s never able to quite feel happy enough.
This contradiction comes to a head in a scene towards the end of the novel when Levin is invited to participate in a Provisional election. He’s stuffed into a room with a rambunctious crowd, and it’s clear from the sporadic and disconnected information that we receive through his eyes that he’s struggling to follow everything being discussed.
Levin then has to cast his vote by placing a white ball into one of two ballot boxes.
Levin entered the Hall, was given a white ball, and, following, his brother [Koznyshev] approached the table.
Levin came up, but having entirely forgotten how the matter stood and being confused he turned to Koznyshev with the inquiry, ‘Where am I to put it?’. He spoke in a low voice at a time when people near by were talking, so he hoped his question would not be heard. But the talk stopped and his improper question was heard.
Several persons smiled. Levin blushed, hastily thrust his hand under the cloth that covered the box, and, as the ball was in his right hand, dropped it on the right side.
Then, when it becomes clear that this debate is only just the beginning of the night’s events, Levin excuses himself from the proceedings.
As no one was paying any attention to him, and he apparently was not wanted by anybody, he went quickly to the small refreshment-room and again felt great relief when he saw the waiters. The old waiter offered him something to eat and Levin accepted. Having eaten a cutlet and beans, and talked with the old man about his former masters, Levin, not wishing to return to the hall where had felt so out of his element, went up into the gallery.
It’s only when he fails to meet his own expectations in such a public setting that he begins to accept his own limitations. He’s not as smart as he thought he was and has now made such a faux pas that he’s exiled himself from what he thought of as his own community. The exposure to a society larger than that of his own private circle has exposed this nerve that he previously kept so hidden.
While I understand many people’s frustration with Levin taking up arguably more time in Anna Karenina than Anna herself, this scene struck me on a personal level.
There are so many stories in media that revolve around a Chosen One™ — be it a latent or newly-granted power — where the main character gradually realises that they are the one to come in and save the day in the most grandiose and dramatic way possible. There aren’t many sympathetic characters where they realise their relative mediocrity.
It’s obvious why the hero narrative is so prevalent. People like to think of themselves as the protagonist in the world’s story, and these stories inspire them to think that maybe they could one day be as great; be as powerful; be as important.
The truth is that most of us aren’t.
While this might sound like a depressing and existentially pessimistic outlook, I’ve come to see it as a launching pad for fulfilment and optimism. To explain how I’m going to take a look at a point-and-click adventure video game from 1999 called The Longest Journey.
This might seem like a sharp left turn but bear with me.
The game’s protagonist April Ryan, has one of these Chosen One™ stories. Ripped from her dystopian futuristic world, she is shown to possess hidden abilities that she didn’t know she had. She goes on an adventure across the fantastical land of Arcadia, meeting and saving people and entire cultures from extinction. All of this occurs with the prophesied destination of her taking up the mantle as the new Guardian, the protector of the balance between these two worlds. Her story comes straight out of the Chosen One™ handbook.
When she eventually reaches her destination at the mystical portal in between worlds, she steps forward to take her predetermined place as the Guardian of the Balance.
But nothing happens. Both she and the player are confused. This isn’t how this story goes.
After multiple failed attempts to step forward, a character with who you’ve had a handful of interactions with steps into the room. He announces himself as the true Guardian of the Balance and is immediately accepted into the position. Dejected, April then leaves and begins the longest journey home.
While, again, this may appear to be a story of ultimate rejection and failure, it made me dig deeper. You think about all of the people that April has touched over the course of her journey. All of the people that she’s saved from destruction. All of the connections that she’s made. All of the little pieces of good that add up.
For both April and Levin, they have a moment of realisation that they’re not special. That they’re not going to be the person of legend that will be talked about through the ages. But that doesn’t say anything about the good that they are able to affect upon the world. The people that are forever changed for the better because you were there. Even the ways in which you improve someone’s day by making them laugh.
None of this is going to tear down the institutional barriers that stand between us and actual progress in the world. For that, we will need heroes to step forward. But for the rest of us, we can begin to hack and chip away the wall in the little ways that we know how. By being true to the people that we are and not the illusions that we wish to be. By looking for and nurturing that same sense in others.
Be a good person because it’s the right thing to do. Not because some prophecy told you to.
Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself — Jean-Paul Sartre
