Zebra

A moral absolutist who wrestled the world into black and white.

Tolstoy was a fiercely principled thinker who divided existence into stark moral categories — right and wrong, authentic and corrupt — and would not compromise his convictions even when they cost him his family, his wealth, and his social standing. Like the zebra, he was stubbornly idealistic and analytically intense, forever arguing his position with a subtle arrogance, certain that his vision of truth was the correct one. His late-life rejection of property, the Church, and his own literary fame in pursuit of a pure moral life is the quintessential zebra move: principled to the point of self-destruction.