 Following the path of contiguous relationships, the realistic author metonymically digresses from the plot to the atmosphere and from the characters to the setting in space and time.He is fond of synecdochic details.In the scene of Anna Karenina's suicide Tolstoy's artistic attention is focused on the heroine's handbag; and in "War and Peace" the synecdoches "hair on the upper lip" or "bare shoulders" are used by the same writer to stand for the female characters to whom these features belong.