Aarón,

Thanks for joining the conversation.

You may be onto something concerning the characters and their blasé response to going off to war. All their fathers seem to have been involved in previous war as well so, like you say, it’s just expected of them. And there wasn’t any mass media back then to advertise the horrors of battle. All they had, the educated anyway, were the great epics which extol the virtues of war rather than warn against it.

About Pierre: the guy is just crazy. I never really thought about it before you brought it up but his flitting behavior in this chapter is really representative of his fickle personality throughout the novel. So it’s a smart way for Tolstoy to introduce that to us.

I hope to hear more from you as we move along this year. Take care.