Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy It had grown quite dark and to the south, where he was looking, there were no longer any clouds. The clouds had passed over in the opposite direction. From there came flashes of lightning and the sound of distant thunder. Levin listened to the regular dripping of the raindrops from the lime trees in the garden and looked at the familiar triangle of stars and the Milky Way intersecting it in the …showed first 75 words of 418 total…

…showed last 75 words of 418 total…shows through this passage when Tolstoy speaks of Levin looking "at the familiar triangle of stars"; by adding one simple word, familiar, into the sentence, Tolstoy reveals that this is not the first time Levin has observed the sky and the stars that he sees. Throughout the novel, Levin is a keen observer, both of others and of nature. His love of nature and his love of observation of nature is evident in this passage.