Prince Andrei's Great Insight

Everyone's getting ready for war, and it's a spooky feeling because we know the outcome won't be good. They're all thinking about heroism and genious and reputation, and we know they'll be slogging through the mud and snow - and dying, starving. Andrei has a glimpse of this, another one of these Tolstoyan moments of revelation. He watches the generals argue about tactics and strategy - the German sure he's right (Pfeul?), the Russian, the Swede, the traitorous Frenchman, each with his own opinion. Andrei realizes that they cannot all be right, that the whole thing is absurd, they're arguing like scholars or theoreticians, and it will all turn on chance or more accurately on some event or condition than none could anticipate - and they will each analyze afterward and explain with his theory would have saved the day, had the commander only followed it. Andrei decides to join the fighting forces - a fateful decision. Rostov, elsewhere, gets ready to fight - but it's absurd, too, - gaiety, as they decide which pub to go to to wait out the storm. They have no idea what's facing them. Foreshadowing? Not really, it's actually the absence of foreshadowing that makes these chapters so effective. Tolstoy stays within the boundaries of his characters' perceptions.