Leo Tolstoy Research Paper

Lewis Carroll once said, “In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take, relationships we were afraid to have and the decisions we waited too long to make”. In the “Death of Ivan Ilych” by Leo Tolstoy, the author highlights the big idea of the artificial life which is represented through everyone in Ivan's society and job. The authentic life is represented by Ivan’s Russian peasant. The theme is to live the right authentic life, and it is expressed when Ivan falls down the ladder, and wrong things both Ivan and his wife value. Ivan Ilyich has a moment of silence and reflects about his life.

Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, is famous for his novels, among them, Anna Karenina . It is said that Tolstoy reaches "unsurpassed perfection in the realistic art of the novel" with Anna Karenina .

Furthermore, in Leo Tolstoy‘s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and analysis will demonstrate that the character Ivan Ilyich struggles throughout his life to achieve the ideals of liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness. It is through Ivan’s death and his friend’s narration of Ivan’s life that the reader comes to the realization the the middle-class Ivan has few strength’s besides his hard work to drive him towards his ideals for wealth and property. Ivan lived his whole life with the purpose of enjoying himself. He did this through winning power at work, spending money, buying things to impress his friends, throwing parties, and playing bridge. His pursuit of happiness in material things and pleasures is so great that his deliberately avoids anything unpleasant. This means that when he settled down with a family, which was expected of him, he never grows close to them.

DICTATORS of hermetically sealed nations do terrible things to their people to retain power. Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot are perhaps the most infamous examples in recent history of despots who controlled every waking moment of their subjects' lives from inside the impenetrable boundaries of their countries.

In the fifth grade I had to do a partner project, immediately I looked at my best friend, excited to work with her. But then the teacher said those words that every student hates. “I’ll pick your partners.” Slowly the teacher listed off who was working with who, than she came to my name. The name she called for me to work with was a name than I hated, a girl I never got along with. She was the smartest girl in the class though, I knew that if I wanted a good grade I would work with her, even though I wanted to work with my best friend. When in a time that we need to work together with someone, we don’t always get to work with who we want to work with. But the people we work with are the ones who give us the best outcome. Similarly, Joseph

On December 18, 1878 Josef Stalin was born. His family lived in a town named Gori “Georgia” in Russia. Stalin’s childhood was very rough, unstable and his living situation was poor. Stalin was the only child and was not taken care of properly. Stalin’s father was abusive and an alcoholic. His father’s occupation was a cobbler (shoemaker). Stalin’s mother was a laundress. As for Stalin though, he suffered cruel and verbal abuse from other children. During his childhood he dreamed of gaining respect and greatness. When Stalin was a teen, Stalin’s mother imagined him as a priest. Stalin was given a scholarship to attend the Georgian Orthodox Church, which did not last long because he was kicked out. After that, Stalin chose to be an underground political agitator, who was known to rebel and have strikes. Stalin later joined the Bolshevik party. The Bolshevik party caused Stalin to commit crimes such as kidnapping, extortion and

Mikhail was born on November 10, 1919 in Kurya, Kuriynsky District Russia. Kalashnikov grew up in a large peasant family. Since, he was the 17th out of 19th children he had to go hunt with his father to help feed the family. In 1930, all

Vladimir Nabokov was the badass who wrote one of the most beautiful and disturbing books of the 20th century.

Tolstoy's story opens with the observation that “Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” Tolstoy is stating the Ivan’s middle-class life was conformed and dull. It lacked true meaning. Ivan was not alone, in this story, of living this as most everyone in the story is materialistic and completely selfish. The Bible states that living your life this way is a life of sin. Ivan breaks all these rules. He chooses his wife because of her looks and status. Ivan lusts for acceptance in society. He is greedy for more money, power, and status on the social ladder. Ivan experiences the wrath of God in the form of his physical and spiritual suffering. Ivan doesn’t begin to repent until he is angrily cursing God for his suffering and he hears an inner voice that asks him what he wants. Ivan responds with “Why, to live as I used to—well and pleasantly” But with that reply, Ivan begins to realize that the life he had been living may not be too well and pleasant. Ivan is coming around to the fact that his life is empty of all but the sins that he has contentedly filled his life with. Only two hours before his death does he grasp that he could have lived better. He also realizes that he still had some time to try to fix what he can. When his wife and son come to visit him for the last time, he asks for their forgiveness. In his weakened state they cannot

The author of The Death of Ivan Ilyich is Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy was born into the aristocratic society in 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana in the province of Tula in Russia. In 1862, he married his wife Sophia Andreyevna Bers. His relationship to his wife was similar to Ivan Ilyich’s relationship to his wife. “His candor concerning his infidelities and his harsh conception of her wifely duties contributed to the instability of their marriage” (Columbia Encyclopedia).

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian author who was born September 9, 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, Russia and died of pneumonia in the winter of 1910. Today Tolstoy is buried at his Yasnaya Polyana estate in Russia. Both of his parents died when he was just a child, and he was raised by

The book The Death of Ivan Ilych is a literary work by Count Leo Tolstoy published in 1886 and has been hailed as a masterpiece both by critics and readers. The author has been reputed as one of the people who changed how the subject of death is treated in society. In the novel, Leo Tolstoy presents the story of Ivan Ilych who lived a wasted life but who is not ready to imagine his own death. Through Gerasim, the peasant servant associated with Ivan, we are able to see the simple and gentle approach manner to which he serves his master. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the first major work of fiction completed by Leo Tolstoy after his existential crisis. “The death of Ivan Ilych can be seen as true reflection of and an elaboration of Tolstoy’s

We will begin with an analysation of his family situation. Praskovya, his wife, had been a love constructed from the start of an economic and sociological expectation rather than that of a true courtship. The happiness therefore of the union was derived solely of a necessity to fulfill a desire on the part of others for a “success” of sorts, surely her desire as well. “Ivan Ilyich could have counted on a more illustrious match, but even this one was quite good. He had his salary, and her income, he hoped, would bring in an equal amount. (Tolstoy, 56)” Tolstoy goes on to make several remarks on the benevolent nature of the relationship between he and his wife. The arrival of his children creates no great marker in his life, and proves to be little more than a factor in his ever-lengthening retreat into his life of solitude and work.

Лев Николаевич Толстой or known in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a famous Russian writer who is also known as one of the greatest authors of all time. Leo Tolstoy was a self-confident man and was sure of his rightness. However, this self-confidence may have caused him involuntarily, to feel envious.