Leo Tolstoy's The Death Of Ivan Ilych

In the beginning of Chapter XII of Tolstoy’s story, Ivan starts to painfully scream loudly for three consecutive days, during which time Ivan realizes that his doubts are still unsolved. During this moment, Ivan realizes that moving up in social esteem has not led to joy, fulfillment, and life, but to misery, emptiness, and death instead. Blinded by the values of high society, he

Tolstoy also employs irony as he examines the plight of Ivan Ilych. This highlights the differences between Ilych's perception of his own life and reality while also allowing the reader to take part in some of the tearing anguish Ivan feels in having to submit to the wrongdoings in his life. Tolstoy compares Ivan Ilych's struggle to the plight of a man condemned to death as he "struggles in the hands of an executioner" (61). Ivan Ilych does not see death as a natural process, but as a punishment controlled by a merciless executioner, ironically much like the merciless judge he once was. Ivan Ilych's feels that death is an undeserved punishment because he never considered his own mortality. His obsession with social adroitness made mortality feel like a punishment, and his justification of this obsession made it impossible for him to let go of his life. Ivan Ilych believed he had lived his life up to social standards and because of this he would not have to endure the terrible agony of death that is beset among ordinary people. In reality he was blind to his shallow life and the transgressions he made.

A story, of any type, is greatly affected by the characters’ outlook on life. A bright, hopeful main character will give the narrative a more lighthearted feel, and cause the reader to feel encouraged and satisfied. If the character has a negative perspective, however, it can elicit sadness, pity, or even irritation from the reader. In Voltaire’s Candide and Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich, two characters with very different worldviews are displayed. The lighthearted Candide maintained an attitude of cheerfulness and perseverance even through the hardships of his life, which stems from his deep love and care for others, while the coldhearted despair of Ivan Ilyich is only intensified into anger by the feigned optimism of those around him.

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

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.

According to C.Joybell C, “The unhappiest people in this world are those who care the most about what other people think” (Goodreads). I can see this in my life and also in Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. The main character Ivan Ilyich is dying from and unknown disease and while suffering finds himself reflecting on his life choices. Ivan consistently questions himself in the text, such as in his statement “What if my life has all been wrong?” (775). He struggles with the idea that his life might have been a waste and that he really did not get to live. Ivan has always made decisions based off of society’s rules and not his own. In fact, he directly quotes this in the text,” It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false” (776). Ivan Ilyich was never a man who thought for himself or let alone went off impulse. He always thought about what people around him would do or think about his decisions.

Ivan went through Kubler-Ross's five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, that was discussed in chapter six. At first, Ivan kept denying that he was in the state of dying. He could not fathom the fact that he as an individual was no longer going to exist anymore. He knew that it was a lot easier to believe that other people die, but the thought of himself dying was unreal to him. "If there's no me, what will there be? There'll be nothing. Where am I going to go, when I'm not anywhere? I mean- death, actual death? No, I don’t want it!" (pg.55). He began to feel very angry with those around him. "Death. Yes. Death. And not one of them knows it, or wants to know; they don’t even feel sorry for me. They're playing the piano" (pg.55). Ivan felt that his entire family kept ignoring the fact that he was dying which made him build up anger towards them. He felt that no one cared about his terminal illness and that nobody understood his feelings. Ivan wanted to rage on everyone who was deceiving him, but managed to stay very composed. Ivan soon began to have bargaining thoughts, such as "Maybe I didn’t live as I should've?" And "In public opinion I was on my way up, and the whole time my life was slipping away from under me" (pg. 88). He began to wonder why it was him that was dying. He wanted to take back his regrets in life and he began to ask himself what he could have done differently. Ivan wanted to bargain his way back into a healthy living life, but he knew that it was too late. "If only I could understand what this is all for! But that’s impossible too. I could explain it

Unlike any of the other characters in the story has a REAL sense of compassion and empathy towards others especially Ivan during his last weeks. Since Gerasim has the well-being of others ahead of his own he is able to connect with people on a more personal scale, which breaks down barriers. With stating this Gerasim is the only character in this story that is able to confront death with equanimity and courage. Gerasim again is the only character in this story that accepts that dirt, death and illness are all parts of life’s grand journey. At the end of Ivan’s life it is Gerasim that is the one that helps with Ivan’s excretions and helps to put Ivan’s feet up at night, he sees by doing these duties for Ivan that he is helping a slowly dying man.

The physical death he must face at the end scares him because it forces him to realize the life he has lived has been completely false. When confronted with death Ivan starts retracing his past, wondering what he has done to deserve such pain and suffering. He realizes when he is bed ridden that he was much more alive as a child then as an adult. In chapter five of The Death of Ivan Ilych, Ivan admits that “…the further back he looked the more life there had been. There had been more of what was good in life and more of life itself,” (Tolstoy 238). If one were to observe small children play, they would notice it does not take much to hold a child’s interest, and often they are much more fascinated by things that don’t work correctly then things that do. With the pressure to conform to society’s views of perfection as an adult, Ivan loses the liveliness he possessed as a child. Having to face death terrifies him because it forces him to admit he actually did not do the correct thing like he thought he did.

Early on his father worked in a charitable hospital and had house within the hospital itself, so Dostoyevsky was exposed to powerful experiences at an early age. He was also raised as a Christian and his ties with Christianity only got deeper and stronger as he progressed through his life. Later in life he met a group of radical writers and intellectuals whom he had become friends with, he wasn’t that involved with the group, but also rounded up with them when the government cracked down on them. In his very last moments right before being shot before the firing squad, a message of reprieve arrived and Dostoyevsky was instead sent to Siberia for four years of forced labor in terrible conditions. After his return from his forced labor he then went on to publish his works of literature. His work was dark, violent, tragic, long and complicated, but he created his work to preach his five lessons to the world on in each of his major works excluding “The Poor”. The lesson that was being taught in “The Grand Inquisitor” was that people could not live in purity and cannot be just purely good. They cannot live up to Christ’s message and that we should accept this and along with all the flaws we have within, such as greed, unreasonableness and short-sightedness and plan our lives accordingly with such in

The Death of Ivan is an interesting read about how perspective can change, specifically death. Tolstoy. the author, uses this short story to display how death can portray a piece of freedom. This is one of Tolstoy's first stories, this is a succesful story in the fact that he experienced some personal spiritual awareness before writing it. He really uses this story to bring his personal truths come to life. Ivan is a character that has lived a life of general purpose. He is unhappily married and just goes through the mundane of day to day life. Tolstoy takes an interesting approach of showing the behavior's of Ivan's family and him while dying first then switches back to his life and finishes with the life ending moment.

I have to admit that this is actually a very interesting short novella, finding it very easy to read, it is very realistic and take us to evaluate ourselves while we understand the life of Ivan Ilych. One of the characteristics of Tolstoy’s writing style is the psychological realism, and we can see this feature strongly emphasized in this piece, as the narrator describes the way of how each of the characters take the news about Ivan Ilych death, how they feel about it and what are their plans after this unfortunate event. In this reading

One major theme that is present in the entire novella is the inevitability of death. Death is something that happens to everyone. No matter how high your social status is, there will come a time when you will wither and die. It does not matter how rich you are or how poor. The major turning point in the story is when Ivan realized that he was getting closer to death every day. Ivan Ilych realized that the customs and traditions of the aristocracy which he had thought were important was the cause of his metaphorical death. He had lost himself while he chased after wealth, social status, and power. He had forgotten about how to live a simple, happy life. He had forgotten about the that there are other people whose concerns and issues that are much more important that his. He has been immersed in the mediocrity and artificiality of life that he has forgotten how it is to care and to love other people.

One of the major themes in the “Grand Inquisitor” is suffering. Ivan tells the story of the sufferings of innocent children. Some examples of the suffering are the the little girl whom her father enjoys beating and the boy who is torn to piece by dogs. The people could not function without Christ, so part of the suffering was there fault and the violence was brought up by the Grand

I agree that Ivan has a revelation towards the end of his life. Tolstoy’s story shows two ways of living life. One is the right and true way which Gerasim represents and the other is the wrong way which Ivan and the others represents. The wrong way of life consists of being materialist, self-interest and having superficial relationships. The wrong way of living life provides no comfort because it is an unfulfilling and makes it impossible to find true meaning to life thus leaving one in fear and alone to face death. Ivan knows about this thru his life experiences. “"Resistance is impossible!" he said to himself. "If I could only understand what it is all for! But that too is impossible. An explanation would be possible if it could be said that I have not lived as I ought