My Elder Brother Summary: Main Theme, Characters & Moral

This is a comical story, however with many takeaways. The speaker of the story begins by telling how his elder brother was older than him by 5 years in terms of age and class. The speaker thinks that his elder brother has continued in the same grades to create a powerful academic foundation. The speaker may be a little kid and, therefore, most likely incapable of creating satiric remarks. The younger brother believes that his elder brother is studious and has great knowledge, which he should follow unquestioningly as we've all been tutored since childhood, that we should respect our elders and obey them. Here, the speaker likes to play and does not prefer to study. Nonetheless, he does not solely pass his examinations. However, he passes the examination with flying colors. On the other hand, his elder brother keeps on studying but fails. Will this imply that the elder brother is stupid? A big no from the speaker's point of view. Every individual has a different grasping power than others. So, I do not think it's honest to correlate the flexibility to recall a memory with intelligence. The elder brother blames the education system, which is biased towards his failures. I notice myself sympathizing with him. I feel that the primary takeaway from this story is: the bias towards commitment to memory. 

The elder brother should act as elder brother as a result of he's 5 years older than the narrator. The younger brother should act sort of like a younger brother as a result of he's 5 years younger. All this role-playing has, I think, underprivileged the elder brother of his childhood. He cannot fly kites he cannot play; he should study all day long as a result he feels he must set an example for his younger brother. I feel that is another takeaway from the story. 

The end of the story, at first, seems kind of abrupt. But, I feel it holds a deeper meaning, the narrator says. The elder brother is reprimanding the younger brother for wasting his time chasing kites. Happy with himself for completely advising his younger brother, the elder brother currently opens his own heart. The elder brother was older than the speaker by 5 years and is all the same as a toddler himself. He confesses that he too desires to fly kites. That confession breaks the ice!  Then, a kite whose line had been cut in a duel sailed on top of the head of the brothers. A few strings remain connected to the kite. The elder brother is sort of tall, he leaps, catches hold of the string, and fling off with the prize. He relieved his childhood.

About the Author

Leo Tolstoy, also spelled Tolstoi, was a Russian author. He was born on August 28, 1828, and died on November 7, 1910. He was a Russian author and the master of realistic fiction. Tolstoy's two major writings, War and Peace (1865–69) and Anna Karenina (1875–77), are often considered to be amongst the greatest novels ever penned. For many readers and reviewers, War and Peace in particular seem to exemplify this genre. The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), one of Tolstoy's short fiction, is considered one of the finest illustrations of the novella. Tolstoy gained international acclaim as a cultural and ethical teacher, particularly in his last three decades. Gandhi was influenced by his ideology of non-resistance to evil. 

Although Tolstoy's religious ideas are no longer held in the same regard as they once were, interest in his life and character has risen in recent years. Most readers will accord with Matthew Arnold, a 19th-century British poet, and critic. Russian author Isaak Babel said that if the world could write, it would write like Tolstoy. Tolstoy's works seem to elude any artifice, according to critics from various schools. Most people have praised his skill to notice even the tiniest shifts in consciousness and capture even the tiniest movements of the body. 

Tolstoy successfully boils down what another novelist might characterize as a particular act of awareness into a succession of vanishingly little steps. These observant powers, according to English writer Virginia Woolf, assumed Tolstoy was "the greatest of all writers. He provoked fear in readers who "want to escape from the stare which Tolstoy fixes on us." Those who visited Tolstoy as an elderly man said he made them feel very uncomfortable since he seemed to comprehend their unspoken sentiments. It was usual to compare him to a god in terms of his abilities and a titan in terms of his efforts to transcend the human state. For almost everyone who grew up knowing him or read his works, Tolstoy was not only one of the greatest writers who ever lived but also a living symbol of the search for life's meaning. Some saw him as the embodiment of nature and pure vitality. Whereas others saw him as the creation of the world's sense of morality.

Leo Tolstoy's First Writings

Tolstoy presented Childhood to Sovremennik, a prestigious periodical headed by poet Nikolay Nekrasov while disguising his identity. Nekrasov was ecstatic, and the anonymously released work received widespread acclaim. Over the next few years, Tolstoy wrote a lot of stories based on his experiences in the Caucasus. This was admired in the first sketch, which depicts the bravery of common soldiers. 

This tale, presented in the second person as if it were a tour guide, shows Tolstoy's intense fascination with stylistic innovation as well as his lifelong preoccupation with the ethics of witnessing other people's pain. In the next drawing, a soldier's stream of consciousness in the moment before he is killed by a bomb is represented. Readers have praised Tolstoy's ability to make "absolute language," which generally degrades realistic prose, artistically appealing ever since. Tolstoy withdrew from the army after the Crimean War and was welcomed by the literary world of St. Petersburg at first. However, the radical elite disliked him because of his abrasive narcissism, refusal to join any intellectual part and demand for total independence. He was to remain an "archaist" throughout his life, opposing current intellectual tendencies. Tolstoy flew to Paris in 1857 and returned after losing all of his money gambling. He returned to Russia and felt that teaching was his true calling, so he established a school for peasant children on his land.

Following a journey of western Europe to learn pedagogical theory and practice, he published 12 issues of Yasnaya Polyana (1862–63), which involved his controversial articles "Progress I opredelenie obrazovaniya" ("Progress and the Definition of Education''), which reject that past has any underpinning laws, and "Komu u kogu uchimsya pisat, krestyan skim rebate In 1862, Tolstoy married Sofya (Sonya) Andreyevna Bers, the daughter of a famous Moscow surgeon, and devoted his entire attention to her and the writing of War and Peace. Tolstoy and his wife had 13 children, ten of whom lived to adulthood.