Three Questions by Leo Tolstoy - Short Story Summary, Analysis, Review

In this video we're going to be looking at Leo Tolstoy's three questions to see why it's one of the greatest fables as well as whether it's just a ripoff of a bible parable. Welcome to the Codex Cantina. I am Una. And I am the fourth question. So this story was published in 1885, not 1985. A little old there so therefore you can read it for free. We put our link down below if you would like to follow along. It is two pages long. I think you can manage to read it probably. No spoilers. Well we're not doing spoilers for short stories anymore but this is post-1880 Tolstoy which means this is after his religious crisis. So he went through this big what does life mean and struggled with it and while he started out with religion strayed away from it and ultimately came back to religion this would be after he had re-found himself in religion and started to write to the common man to keep things simple for people like me and to really kind of bring out purposes of life and kind of teachings in the bible to the common peasant folk if you will. What did you think of the story so far? Oh I enjoyed it. I thought it's a great story. I think that it's one that is written obviously to teach that it is so it's right up my alley. So let's get fably with it. What we're going to do is just kind of do a quick plot breakdown and then kind of some analysis and it's going to be interesting because this is obviously a fable so it's meant to be simple so that people get the point but I think we have some interesting elements as to where this came from with a lot of his religious studies. So for plot a king is looking for the answer to three questions. When is the most important time to do it? Who do I need to listen to? What is the most important thing to do? Many people give their advice. Some say to schedule everything. Others said to pay attention to all that needs to be done and then just pick out the most needful. Some said he needs a counsel with a magician to figure it out. Many classes were recommended as advisors and many important occupations were said to be attended to. King didn't like these so he heads to the woods to talk to a hermit who is very wise and the hermit doesn't respond but is digging. So the king helps him dig and then along stumbles an injured man who is bleeding from the belly. They tend to him, they take care of him, they wrap him. King falls asleep and when he wakes up he finds out that this man that he just helped and saved was an assassin that was there to actually kill him and by upon helping him the assassin promises to to repay his debts and to serve the king from there on out. So finally the king getting ready to leave he's like dude Mr. Hermit I don't get I don't get this what are the three things I need to do. The hermit's like don't you see the most important thing to do is to help the person in front of you the most important time to do it is to help them now and the most important person to attend to is the person in front of you the person in need basically. End plot. So very simple plot. Yep I was looking for a twist I was hoping for a twist at the end but nothing happened. Nope this this this I think story rings very very true and to me I almost I almost know the exact parable that he's pulling on and giving it his own Tolstoy rendition of it did did that jump out at you when you read this? I kept trying to think about what it came from the bible kept trying to think about which of the Aesop's fables this might be okay but I never could nail it down. Let me give you my thoughts on it I have no idea if anyone else has written on this or not but but here's what I took from it and I don't want to name the parable I want to give you this parable and I want you to I want to see if you know it because the problem is if you tell the people the parable they go oh okay and it's almost like they write it off like it's cliche right but if you sit down and really study it that's when you can pull stuff from it so basically this law expert comes to Jesus and says hey man how do I get eternal life and uh Jesus is like well you're an expert in law what's the law say it says well love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and and love your neighbor as yourself and Jesus was like yeah dude that that's what you got to do and this guy's like I don't get it so then basically Jesus tells him this quick story where a man was beaten by I think robbers and left on the side of the road for dead priest comes along crosses the road because you know hey he can't be bothered bothered with this guy a Levite comes along crosses the road because hey again he can't help this guy basically a good guy comes along sees him beaten on the side of the road picks him up bandages him helps him along to to be healed just doesn't pass by his day and even puts him on his donkey to kind of help go take care of him and then at the end Jesus tells this lawmaker okay who was the good neighbor to the to the beaten man now with that story does the parable ring do you know which parable it is now oh man I know I should know this but yeah you'll have to tell me this is good old Luke um this is the this is the story of the the good Samaritan okay right and what I think's interesting is when you look at the Bible version and I don't think this isn't criticism on the Bible right but I think when a lot of people hear that they're like yeah of course you help the guy that's beaten but not many people actually do that what what I like about what Tolstoy did with his version of the story about the most important thing to do is to help the guy in front of you the most important time is now and the most important thing to do is to do good right is Tolstoy with this like robber that was going or the assassin that was going to hurt the king in his story it gives agency to why now because because the good Samaritan version people might ask the question well what happens if I don't help that guy and the answer is well you may not get to heaven right that then you don't reach eternal life which is probably a bigger threat but most people don't take that seriously what what I think Tolstoy was able to do was kind of to be able to add that agency of time into the story as to why you need to do good to the people that need help and why you need to do it right now I like that that's good my slightly different interpretation of this was to help even your enemies so he helped this guy and this guy said you did all these wrong things to my brother and I was here to kill you to get revenge and you healed me so now I'm going to give myself over to you and I feel like Tolstoy was trying to say you should be nice to everybody even your most hated enemy because one day they may save you and the the king I think learns that lesson but he's still confused about the other things that he wants to know but I think Tolstoy to us as the reader is trying to teach us the lesson of love everybody even your enemy so that's kind of how I took it but I think both both kind of fit love your neighbor love yourself love your enemy love yourself it all it all kind of falls together no I don't disagree with anything that you said I completely agree with what you said I think I would agree with what you said and more right it's not just love your enemy it's love your neighbor yeah this is really what it is love the person in front of you that needs to help and do good one of the things in the story I wanted to kind of talk about real briefly and that's all I had to kind of talk about with the subject is kind of talk about one of some of the things that the people were recommending and why I think would dismiss those as options so some people said just to schedule everything and I think that one's interesting to throw out as a false answer because of course you can't control or know everything that needs to be done right yeah you can't anticipate everything others say pay attention to everything and then only pick out the most needful and the issue with that one is who would be able to classify everything that is needful you're going to constantly have issues of of power corrupts I think sometimes with deciding maybe some things are more needful when it benefits you as opposed to you know utilitarianism depending on you know kind of how you want to prioritize things some said he needed a counsel and a magician and I think this is interesting too because instead of you making a decision you're outsourcing it and just because you outsource it what makes that decision better than you yourself it's just a different person making that decision sure if we're all making imperfect decisions that's not going to help right and I love the word magician too that's just a funny word yeah that was fun in there my kind of last thought on this was as the story was unfolding I kept thinking there was going to be a twist to this but then also when there wasn't I was reflecting back on it I was okay with that but there is kind of a twist right the king for all his infinite wisdom can't figure out the most simple thing he dismisses all these other things that are that are told to him right he's given some decent advice I mean if you try to plan for stuff that can help you live a better life if you ask for advice and you're not arrogant you know and the king is doing that anyway he's he's trying to figure these things out to be a better person to better be a better king I think and as a result he dismisses really good slash imperfect advice to try to find the best advice and he still doesn't get it in the very end and that's what I is that situational irony again what I think is the advice that is given to him is all given by people wrapped up in society where they are looking for and I think that last line is where I kind of where I grabbed this from so why do I think that the last line of advice that they're giving is the things you should focus on our warfare the things you should focus on our science and it's all external things which you know depending on how you look at it okay society is typically focused on societal things why did he go to a hermit to escape society to reflect on his own internal character and say am I own internally good before I can worry about the good of my people my kingdom and others I myself must be whole like you know you have to love yourself before you can love others cliche yeah I took it as that so if you were to rewrite this today you do it with like a CEO instead of and he would be talking to how to better run his company his company be talking to his shareholders or his board or maybe his secretaries or something like that and he would leave distraught from the office and maybe go talk to a homeless man or something and somebody was going to rob him and blah blah you know the story kind of unfolds the same way and I guess that would kind of work I just wondered too are the people like yes men are they telling him what they think he wants to hear also and the hermits not well or are they bettering themselves right are the knights asking for better warfare are the mathematicians asking for better science you know like things like that yeah because they're going to make more money they're going to get paid better they're going to have their their aspects of the kingdom more funded so yeah there's a lot to this story for being so short there's so many different ways you can look at it and I think this is one that you got to give a solid b2 so if we want to go with ratings I'm going to go with a hefty eight here did you say eight yeah like eight out of ten out of ten okay okay no that's my rating too I think okay I think this is it's so eloquent and clear and I love that for it and I love the pieces that you can take from it so I think it's a good story and well worth a two-page read this is 10 minutes max of your time definitely something worth checking oh as I said in the beginning I would do this as a class discussion read this discuss this and let's have you know some type of this beta discussion at the end of class and I think that students can get a lot out of this everybody can get a lot out of this story all right so out of January we're doing the greatest stories allegedly ever written your favorite short story is Kurt Vonnegut I'm gonna guess that since you gave it an eight this didn't take over as the greatest short story for you of all time nope but still a good story still fun little read yeah yeah this was kind of a bonus one I didn't think this was going to take it over but I knew I wanted it in our arsenal okay guys thank you so much for checking out this video did you think that this was a complete ripoff from the bible or did you like the interpretation that Tolstoy went on again I don't think Tolstoy was trying to replace anything like that or improve upon it this is his version on giving agency I think to other elements that maybe the bible didn't focus on not that the bible's imperfect just his version of it let us know what you guys think in the thoughts below please consider subscribing as we do literature breakdowns every Monday and Thursday along with bonus videos typically every week all right guys thank you for checking us out peace out peace