Random Walks in War and Peace

• In Event: Mental, Physical, and Artistic Journeys in Tolstoy’s War and Peace

Abstract

War and Peace presents a world that is both highly patterned (with, for example, recurring themes of human motivation) and stochastically confounding, overwhelming in everything from the sheer number of pages, characters, and events to the imponderable movement of peoples from west to east and back. This paper explores the boundary between swarm and pattern, and Tolstoy’s techniques for navigating it.

Author

• Timothy Langen, U of Missouri