What happens when you exclude yourself from society, or are cut off from it? This is the main question that Leo Tolstoy explores in Anna Karenina. Isolated from society, Anna is destroyed by a conflict of wills. The desire of the individual is forced to give way to the restrictions and demands of society, represented in the image of the railway. Those who do not conform to society will ultimately face death, a fate that both Anna and Vronsky cannot escape due to their illegitimate relationship. In addition to personifying the need to live within the realm of societal expectations, the railroad plays a central role in the novel's organizational plan. The main railway scenes can be interpreted as pillars that support the structure of the novel by connecting the Anna/Vronsky plot. It is at the train station that Anna is introduced to Vronsky, where he admits his love for her and where Anna makes her first and last appearance. The recurrence of motifs and the eventual return to initial associations within Anna Karenina serve to create the symmetrical architecture of the work. The first mention of the railway is in the context of children and their games, which serves as a premonition of events to come. The children who are aware of the current family disturbance are playing with a box, which represents a train. Stiva's eldest daughter overheard her berating her younger brother, telling him that "[she] told him not to put the passengers on the roof", ordering him to "[pick them up!" (Anna Karenina p.7). The children's games foreshadow not only the accident at the station but also Anna's suicide at the novel's conclusion. ...... middle of the paper ...... As a result of Anna's willingness to abandon her home and husband to build her happiness on the suffering of other human beings. Anna's action causes Kitty to suffer heartbreak as she loses Vronsky, the man she loved, to Anna. Furthermore, Anna and Vronsky's affair breaks Anna and Karenin's marriage and causes Serezha to grow up without her mother's presence. Society's wrath punishes Anna for her sin, crushing her, both metaphorically and literally. Bibliography Tolstoy, Leone. Anna Carenina. Translated by Yuri Corrigan. London: Genius Translators Press, 1999.Bayley, John. Tolstoy and the novel. London, 1966.Gustafson, Richard. Leo Tolstoy: resident and foreigner. Princeton, 1986.Jahn, Gary. The image of the railway in Anna Karenina. The Slavic and Eastern European Journal Vol. 25, no. 2 (summer 1981), pp. 1-10