Leo Tolstoy: The Death Of Ivan Ilych

“Tuesdays with Morrie” and “The Death of Ivan Ilych” both portray a character who is dealing with a serious terminal illness and advance knowledge of their deaths. One story is based on the realistic life of an American professor with the story’s characteristics tone from the 1990’s while the other is set during nineteenth century Russia. Even though Morrie Schwartz and Ivan Ilych both suffered from the illness, their dissimilar lifestyles and beliefs led to different perspective on facing death. One views the knowledge as a blessing and an opportunity to share his life experiences before making his final good-byes, the other agonizes in pain and begs for an

In The Death of Ivan Ilych Leo Tolstoy conveys the psychological importance of the last, pivotal scene through the use of diction, symbolism, irony. As Ivan Ilych suffers through his last moments on earth, Tolstoy narrates this man's struggle to evolve and to ultimately realize his life was not perfect. Using symbols Tolstoy creates a vivid image pertaining to a topic few people can even start to comprehend- the reexamination of one's life while on the brink of death. In using symbols and irony Tolstoy vividly conveys the manner in which Ilych views death as darkness unto his last moments of life when he finally admits imperfection.

In his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy offers his audience a glance into the life and death of an ambitious man, Ivan Ilych. Tolstoy uses the death of Ivan Ilyich to show his audience the negative consequences of living the way Ilych did. Ivan Ilych followed society and made decisions based on what others around him conformed to and not so much about what he genuinely wanted until he was on his deathbed. As death approaches Ilych he realizes that he wrecked everything that should be meaningful in his life in order to work and make money and in the end his friends did not really care much about him. Ilych’s desire to conform made him live a miserable life and led him to darkness. Ivan Ilych attained everything that society

    In the face of Morrie's overwhelming compassion and tenderness, Ivan Ilych presents an opposite lifestyle. After a pleasantly carefree childhood he turned towards ambition and pursued an ever-larger salary and an ever-increasing social rank. Ivan lived without values and without attachments, easily moving between cities and jobs. He cared little for the great inconvenience of his family, and even less for his wife: "he hate[d] her with his whole soul" (Ivn, 139). Commitment was a prison to be avoided at all costs, a detriment to his proper and official existence. Genuine love touched Ivan only rarely and certainly not during the dying moments when he needed it the most.

2. Ivan discovers about physical death that he comes to face to the dreaded, hateful reality of death. He talks to the voice of his soul about his death. When Ivan accepts the death, his son shows him if love can reverse fear, doubt and mistrust. Then, as he actually dies, he discovers that when he lets go of pain and suffering, life’s true direction is through death into unending life. He believes that he is being born.

Life and Death in “The Death of Ivan Ilych” In the final passage of “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” Leo Tolstoy questions the importance of human interaction, empathy, and love in determining life’s meaning and living a good life. In particular Ivan Ilych realizes that his preoccupation with the material world and emotionless behavior towards people around him was not the right way to live and his life had been squandered. He then questions the right way to live, and comes to the conclusion that to live life in the right way to is to be selfless, live in relation to other humans, and demonstrate and experience empathy and love for people around you. Ivan acts on his new outlook on the right way to live life when he decides that must die to prevent

I related readily with Ivan Ilyich, the main character in Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. There was a time when I myself lived my life without regard to the spirituality of life. I, however, was very lucky in that it did not take death looming over my head to realize this. Maybe the fact that my bout of depression’s onset happened sooner in life allowed me to see it sooner. Eric Simpson put it best as “We all die, like Ilyich, and if we only live to live, to create and carve our own meaning into the universe, then life itself becomes ultimately meaningless and painfully insignificant.”

Tolstoy, in other hand, immerses a reader into a short life story of the protagonist, starting from his family origins, to his youth and his adult life. The misleading nature of Ivan Ilyich’s existence is demonstrated from the very beginning of novella which accurately describes the illusory reality the main character is living in. The reader might be curious why the normal and ordinary life could be horrible. It is not much possible that Tolstoy was against ordinariness itself, but rather to show the reader that the main character Ivan Ilyich never reaches anything meaningful and exciting in his life. Ivan becomes kind of a prisoner of social milieu, he does everything that is expected of him: he goes to law school just like his father did, he finds a job, gets promoted, earns enough money to enjoy his life, fulfills his duty. He becomes kind of a spiritual zombie. Tolstoy describes main character’s absence of “real” life in a subtle but authentic way, showing that Ivan is not much different from the people in his circle. As an inventor of his own illusion, or the “lie”, in which main character lives, Ivan is not showing much curiosity, moreover he is not in search of any kind of truth. He simply exists in his undisturbed, tranquil environment, until something unpredictable happens to him. During one of his ordinary actions, while hanging the new curtains in his new house, he slips, falls down, banging his side against the window frame. This

In Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, protagonist Ivan Ilych lives a life he considers to be marvelous and filled with the things he wants and considers important (both physical and emotional). He has a wonderful job he's good at, a beautiful family, a lovely house, and friends to play games like bridge with in the evenings. One day, when he is fixing up his new home before his family arrives, he hits his side after slipping by making bad step on a ladder. He convinces himself that it is only a bruise, and that the pain will pass. The pain doesn't simply pass, though. Doctor after doctor attempts to diagnose what might possibly be wrong with him, but none of them are able to agree on what his injury is. As he continues to live his life as he planned, the sensation of pain continues to come back to him repeatedly until he is eventually on his deathbed. As he realizes he is approaching the very end of his life, Ivan Ilych ponders over his life and begins to question himself, asking “What if my whole life has been wrong?” (Tolstoy 54). He comes to the conclusion that the things that are important are not tangible items such as money or property. Rather, he decides that the things that truly matter in life are intangible, such as happiness, compassion, and facing the truth. He realizes too late that these important feelings and concepts have been missing from his life all along.

     The progress of modern society and the pressure to conform has not only hastened Ivan Ilych’s death but also made him a die a very miserable death. As soon Ivan realizes he has a physical problem, a problem that began with his obsession of having the perfect house, he consults one of the best doctors he

The seen environment present when reading The Death of Ivan Ilych story is the way Ivan’s family lived and the way Ivan treated everyone with coldness. The unseen was depicted by the atmosphere present in Ivan’s’ room, making friends and family members uncomfortable to be there. The storied environment is when Ivan realizes that his life has been a mistake and he converts religiously, he finds God and Ivan repents from all his sins, it is not until then that he found peace in his mind.

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

In this paper, I plan to explain Dostoevsky’s criticism of Western Individualism. Dostoevsky’s first criticism resides in the idea to “love life more than the meaning of it, “which is presented by the character Alyosha (Dostoevsky 3). Allowing this character to discuss this topic, along with the commentary of Ivan, demonstrates their mindset to solely focus on their own lives, opposed to caring for others. This leads to them living for the now, and not focusing on how their decisions will affect their future or others. Dostoevsky disapproves of this notion because living by this mentality encourages the guidance of logic, which is dangerous because it could tell you to kill yourself. From Dostoevsky’s Eastern Orthodox background, he believes that the only way from living from this situation is to deny it. By denying this way of living, the focus toward life will not be directed toward yourself, but toward the way you can impact the environment around you. Ivan clearly does not believe in these values, due to his intentions to commit suicide at the age of thirty. As said before, living by the idea to “love life more than the meaning of it” leads to death, and Ivan indulges in this to the fullest (Dostoevsky 3).

Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of a modern lawman whose sudden mortality forces him to evaluate the worth of his life and the life choices he has. Throughout the novella, Tolstoy reveals social norms and practices blindly followed by those in the upper-middle class. These norms bring to light modernity’s core values, which Tolstoy critiques through the actions Ivan Ilyich takes before his death, Ivan Ilyich’s revelation as he lies on his death bed, and the way Ivan Ilyich’s family, friends, and colleagues react to his illness and eventual death. In fact, The Death of Ivan Ilyich provides a critique on modernity as a whole; Tolstoy condemns the shallow, superficial lives the higher-ups in society lead, spurred on by the idea of modernity.