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Death Of Ivan Ilyich Character Analysis

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Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a novella that depicts how the main character, Ivan Ilyich, undergoes the long process of dying. The novella depicts how Ivan Ilyich injures himself while decorating his house and how this apparently inconsequential injury, is actually a fatal one. When the story was first published in 1886, writing about death was common. For centuries, books had been written detailing the deaths of main characters. What makes The Death of Ivan Ilyich unique, however, is how Tolstoy structures the book time-wise. The novella begins with Ivan’s funeral, and then the story then flashes back to depict Ivan’s life and death. Tolstoy glosses over Ivan’s life extremely quickly as if to say that Ivan’s life was …show more content…

These men worked with Ivan, they knew his family, and they were even schoolmates with him in law school. And yet, when they hear that their acquaintance has died, they continue to live their life as they had before they found out. They are even glad that it is Ivan who has suffered this terrible fate and not themselves. They do not seem to care that Ivan has died. The only thing that these “friends” seem to care about is having to go to Ivan’s funeral and how that will detract from their time playing cards. “But his closest acquaintances, Ivan Ilyich’s so-called friends, couldn’t help thinking that they would now have to fulfil some tedious social obligations such as attending the funeral and calling on the widow to express their condolences.” These reactions to Ivan’s death are despicable. And, that is what Tolstoy wants the reader to understand. One reason why Tolstoy begins the novella after Ivan has died is to show how Ivan’s friends reacted to his death with such a nonchalant attitude. Tolstoy wants to show how people in general react to death and do not fully care about the importance of death. With his book he is trying to change the way that people see death and the way that people treat people who are dying. He started to book by showing the reader how Ivan’s friends and family react to Ivan’s death in order to critique the way that death is treated.

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