The Cause of It All
1910
The Cause of It All
1910
Translated by Aylmer Maude
In a cramped peasant hut, a family fractures under the weight of ruin. Michael drinks away what little they have, while his aging mother Akulína watches her son vanish into bottles and rage, and his long-suffering wife Martha carries the weight of survival on her shoulders. When a wandering tramp accepts their hospitality for a night, a pocket watch goes missing, and the family must decide whether to condemn a stranger or confront the truth about themselves. Tolstoy strips away all ornamentation to show how poverty, drink, and helplessness corrode love into something almost unrecognizable. The title poses a question that haunts every page: what is the real cause of it all? The drink? The hunger? The centuries of oppression that leave a man with nothing but exhaustion and rage? Tolstoy refuses easy answers, offering instead a devastating portrait of people trapped in systems larger than themselves, fighting each other while the real enemy goes unnamed. This is Tolstoy at his most raw and uncompromising, a moralist who understood that the hardest questions yield no heroes and no victories.
Editions
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-cause-of-it-all-3cd229d2-d009-467b-ade3-5d102cead71c"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The Cause of It All by Leo Tolstoy free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-cause-of-it-all-3cd229d2-d009-467b-ade3-5d102cead71c)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-cause-of-it-all-3cd229d2-d009-467b-ade3-5d102cead71c][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The Cause of It All by Leo Tolstoy free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-cause-of-it-all-3cd229d2-d009-467b-ade3-5d102cead71cCite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Tolstoy, Leo. The Cause of It All. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-cause-of-it-all-3cd229d2-d009-467b-ade3-5d102cead71c.Tolstoy, L. (1910). The Cause of It All. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-cause-of-it-all-3cd229d2-d009-467b-ade3-5d102cead71cTolstoy, Leo. The Cause of It All. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-cause-of-it-all-3cd229d2-d009-467b-ade3-5d102cead71c.
