The Devil by Leo Tolstoy
Published 1911 · 165 pages · 19,413 words · about 1 hour at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Short Fiction
How hard is The Devil to read?
The Devil scores 40 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 32 out of 100
- Tolstoy's prose, in Maude's translation, uses plain domestic and agricultural terms: beet crops, mortgages, the Zemstvo. It is far clearer than The Great Gatsby and close to The Remains of the Day in register.
- Sentence structure: 33 out of 100
- Sentences are short and declarative, with long lists only in the estate-management passages. The prose is as direct as Orwell's 1984, with only occasional longer interior sentences.
- Abstraction: 42 out of 100
- The story is built on concrete scenes: a pail at a door, a threshing machine, a candle flame. Its idea, desire as an involuntary force, comes through Eugene's inner debates rather than through philosophy, so it sits near To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Information density: 30 out of 100
- A short novella with a small cast and one obsessive thread. Estate finances and social detail add some texture, but the pace is quick and light, like Beach Read in density.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Tolstoy states Eugene's thoughts openly and explains his self-deceptions as they happen. The reader still reads against Eugene's rationalizations about health and his doubts about Stepanida's feelings, and the two endings leave the cause of his fate open.
- Symbolic density: 42 out of 100
- The red kerchief, the burned finger, the revolver and the devil of the title carry meaning, but they are signposted and plain, closer to 1984 than to Moby-Dick.
- Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
- The narrator undercuts Eugene's self-justifications: health, hygiene, honor. The preface, the mothers' squabbles and the doctor's hedging add comic distance, though the story stays earnest at its core, like Notes from Underground in miniature.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Tolstoy left two endings, suicide or murder, and Maude says the author's choice is unknown. Each ending closes the plot, but the story ends on that fork and the inquest's closing remark about insanity.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- The plot is linear in short numbered chapters, with a translator's preface and a variant ending. This is simple compared with The Master and Margarita, close to Anna Karenina's clarity of progression.
How The Devil is regarded
The Devil holds a literary regard score of 63 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.