Tolstoy's ultimate parallelism, however, is keynoted in his title, with the polar qualities of war and peace providing the physical and emotional settings of incidents that further investigate the duality between collective life and individual life. Events that occur in peacetime are often echoed during the war scenes, and the perspective Tolstoy achieves from these twice-told incidents deepens our understanding of the moral truths he wishes to underscore.
When we compare the"peacefulness" of the first campaigns depicted in the novel with the death duel of the battle of Borodino, we see how Tolstoy uses this duality to intensify our feelings for the event that forms the turning point of the war. The first cannon boom at Schöngraben coincides with a burst of sunlight that lifts the spirits of the bored, but gay, soldiers. The sunrise over Borodino, on the other hand, illuminates a scene of carnage and desperation while the grim survivors face death every moment.
Numerous minor incidents illustrate how Tolstoy uses the settings of war and of peace to reveal new aspects of particular situations. Pierre, for example, meets Osip Bazdyev during a peacetime journey that sets him on a new moral path. Osip's influence here foreshadows Pierre's ultimate conversion through Karataev, Bazdyev's spiritual counterpart, which occurs during Bezuhov's wartime experiences.
Natasha, to provide another example, has two major meetings and partings with Andrey: the first, during the tranquil days of her youth, the final one during the wartime exodus from Moscow. Prince Andrey's first awareness of death, occurring in peacetime when he sees Liza die, prefigures his own fatal moment on the Austerlitz battlefield.
