War and Peace Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 9 Summary

  • Pierre immediately falls asleep and has some crazy dreams.
  • In his first dream, he's back at the battle, with the noise and guns and smoke and dead people. This nightmare wakes him up slightly.
  • Next, he moves into another dream in which he's back at the English Club with his Masonic mentor at the head of the table. Across the table are Dolokhov, Anatole, and Denisov – guys Pierre actively dislikes and is maybe a little intimidated by. They're yelling and singing. Pierre ignores them and listens to his mentor, who is saying something really useful. The other guys surround the mentor, crowding Pierre out, and Pierre is suddenly embarrassed to be shoeless. Again he wakes up a little bit.
  • In his third dream, he hears a voice in his head revealing the secrets of the universe. Or at least that’s what it feels like. The main secret is in uniting all things and all meanings within the soul. (Say what? Yeah, we agree – pretty confusing.) The voice then yells that everything has to be “hitched” together, and Pierre wakes up to the coachman telling him that the everything has been “hitched” together and they’re ready to go.
  • Pierre then has that really common experience where he just knows that if he’d stayed asleep another two minutes he’d really be able to understand the deep thoughts of his dream, but now it’s too late and he’s forgetting what he dreamed about. Argh – so frustrating.
  • The troops are departing all around him and leaving the wounded behind.
  • On the road, Pierre learns that Andrei is dead.
  • Hold the phone! Andrei is dead? Just like that? And this is how we find out? That’s cold.