With the final retreat of the French, with Pierre's discovering a new freedom out of imprisonment and a new joy out of suffering, Tolstoy is preparing us for many conclusions which are, in effect, beginnings as well. The imminent Russian victory begins a new chapter in the history of Russia, just as the premature bloom and death of Petya Rostov marks the new generation. Tolstoy's sensitive depiction of Petya's eagerness and immaturity and his newly awakened sympathies toward the enemy drummer boy echo Nikolay's early experiences as a novice soldier who cannot kill an individuated human being. This repetition not only shows the passing of time and generation but underscores the continuity of life and the universality of experience.
Because it is prefigured by the death of Platon Karataev, Petya's death is conveyed to us by the author with the same"lack of feeling" Pierre felt at Platon's demise. The"lack of feeling" is not callousness but rather an expression of God's universal, equally extended love. Death is one consequence of the process of growth, Tolstoy seems to say, and Petya's death is another incidental sacrifice to the cause of the war, in itself a mode of national growth.
By comparing the way Petya is sacrificed with the way Napoleon and Ney sacrifice their men to their own self-interests, Tolstoy restates his thesis on the"nothingness and immeasurable littleness" of human beings. In the Tolstoyan sense, men are"immeasurably little" compared to the universe of which they are a part; in the"Napoleonic" sense, they are nothing because they are tools, and this is the fallacy historians accept. Ability to act according to the measure of right and wrong is one of the defining qualities of human beings. With these standards suspended, as they are when historians refrain from judging the actions of"great men," the humanness of man no longer exists. Tolstoy wishes to ask historians why they consider Napoleon a"great man" when what he precisely lacks is this defining quality of humanness.
