Understanding Free Will vs Fate
Tolstoy interrupts the Borodino narrative to challenge the idea that battles are won by brilliant commanders executing elegant plans. History books compress chaos into hero stories. What actually happens is thousands of people acting under fear, habit, and incomplete information. The plan is a legend told afterward.
Key Insight
When you need a clean story, you invent a protagonist. Notice how much of your own life is later narrated as strategy when it was mostly pressure, habit, and other people's motion.
