The Death Of Ivan Ilych By Leo Tolstoy

Throughout the essay, Charles Murray stresses the idea that college is the wonderland of finding oneself and to find the career that one would want to follow for the rest of their lives. “College is seen as the open sesame to a good job and a desirable way for adolescents to transition to adulthood. Neither reason is as persuasive as it first appears.” Murray, C (2008) Practically spoken, this is not normally the case. College is a fair amount of work, much more work than one would normally acquire through any course of a high school or secondary school setting. In no way saying that the average student cannot meet the requirement and achieve success over the amounted work, it would also be ridiculous to expect every graduate to pursue going into higher education with the expansion of work that will be given.

More people than ever before are attending college due to the endless opportunities that it provides. Louis Menand, a college professor and the author of “Live and Learn: Why We Have College,” explains the meaning of college through three theories that have been developed. Theory 1 supports the idea of the sorting-out process that separates the highly intelligent from the less intelligent. Menand’s second theory explains that college provides opportunities for developmental growth, personal growth, and teaches individuals about the world around us. These are valuable lessons that will not be learned anywhere else. Theory three supports the idea of people attending college to specialize in a specific vocation. I

What we get out of the college experience, we use in our day to day lives. Even the things we think aren’t important or useful end up becoming helpful. The material we learn in college is fundamental when it comes jobs and life in general. We are taught to make choices. We are taught how the real world works, and how to turn our education into our way of life. “…the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” (Wallace 199).

Colleges and Universities are windows of knowledge that many people try to break, in doing so, people are ready for the next stage of their life. But not many have the option to go the world where knowledge is everything, and end being a simple worker all his life. People would judge a person for not having a degree, bachelor and many more. But do they ever think that colleges or universities are really preparing you for any jobs, does a piece of paper worth a lot now a days. Freeman Hrabowski wrote an article responding to people that think educations is a waste of time, and it is called “College Prepare People for life” (Hrabowski). In the article he mentions many positive thing about going to college and what is the outcome of going to college. But I believe that, he hasn’t done a very good job to explain why college is a good place to go prepare yourself for the real world. I believe that college is very important for our life, but not many of us know if we are really learning something while being in college. I feel like colleges or universities has become a place where we go just to go or try to earn a degree in any field. Therefore, I believe that colleges doesn’t enhance our basic skills, doesn’t give us a certainty of us getting a good job, doesn’t give us the hardships of the real world and it isn’t a place where everyone gets treated it equally.

Jaschik explains in his article, “Academically Adrift” written in 2011, the decline of learning in college and the minimal amount of expectations placed on students. The article suggests that a survey was taken amongst college students that tested their accuracy on levels of analysis and critical thinking; the results were poor. The goal of college is to improve your academic skills on a higher level. The article hints that most students take courses that fulfill the academic requirements, but are not grasping the scholarly information being presented. Jaschik uses the art of persuasion, scholarly data, and assertive emotion to persuade his audience that college fails to fulfill its primary purpose as the title suggests.

What Is College For? By Gary Gutting is an analytical article upon the importance of a higher education to the public, he begins by discussing the statistics of what college has deemed worthful to people after their education. It was evident that many found it to be useful later on in life and helped them mature and grow intellectually. Gutting also points out that although many people find themselves to be successful later on after college that not everybody had the same experience, many had to drop out for the fact that a higher education was considered to be too expensive, or dropout rates too high. It is evident that he deems college to be an investment for many people who were fortunate enough to attend, therefore, providing the habits of mind of engagement, persistence, and openness to display how they play key points to the qualifying traits of a college student.

Dale Stephens, founder of Uncollege, a social movement supporting self-directed higher education, has a very strong belief that college is a waste of time. In his opinion piece for CNN appropriately title “College is a waste of time”, Stephens shows the downsides of going to college such as the cost of it, the consequences of failing, and how it does not prepare you for the real world. The Wabash National study held a survey asking college students and graduates what they came away with out of college. With all the data they captured, the study concluded that the majority of the groups tested believe the only things they learned from school were life lessons. The fact of the matter is, although you learn life lessons throughout your experience in college, ultimately it is a waste of time because it does not help you much academically.

When I first began college, I knew that I wanted to major in civil engineering; However, knowing that my major would take up all of my units after finishing the general education classes, I knew that I could not afford to take any extra classes, to explore and expand my own curiosity and knowledge of what is available. Instead, I decided to invest my academic career focusing on engineering. As freshman students began college, many students asked themselves that oh so common and over beaten life question “what is the point of college?,” while others wondered if it was it a place to explore and discover more about one’s self. Well now, thanks to Kwame Anthony Appiah, who teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. and wrote an article “What Is the Point of College?,” he explains two visions which are Utility U. and Utopia U. as well as the habits students possess at the start of college. As students first enter the college world they go through what is known as, Utility and/or Utopia vision; However, one vision would be stronger than the other. A Utility vision is when you want to know if you are getting a profitable return in an investment, while the same students are also act out the role of a consumer. Utility U. possess certain requirements that need to be filled and will pay for expenses in exchange for quick responses such as the desire, to be taught. Plus the fact that, Utility U. is concerned with value, echoing the idea in the section in, Utilitarians “value proposition” (appiah

The major reason of going to college is to get a good job. College prepares us with academic knowledge in order to succeed in the future. Many people think that a higher education is essential to prepare a person for their future. As

College is a narrow box that limited our life experience and choice in future. Gerald Graff says in his articles, ‘Our schools are not seeing the academic potential of the topic outside of school.’ (Graff, 268) School doesn’t give us access to the topic that they think are not important which limit our knowledge. Charles Murray also says, ‘the culture push people who don’t have academic ability or motivation to attain their degree on they just fail.’ (Murray, 238) It limits our opportunity of experiencing things other than academic works. Life learning should be a collection of knowledge and experience, both are equally significant. Knowledge alone is no useful unless we make some connection between them. Therefore, life experience is necessary.

In his acceptance speech for the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, the American laureate writer, William Faulkner provided insight to what he felt is the only important subject worth writing about; “the human heart in conflict with itself.” After reading the entire speech and putting that phrase in context, I believe he was referring to a shift authors were making at that time in writing about external forces, which are not universally relevant. William Faulkner believed it more important to write about the struggles each of us face with the human spirit and the lessons available through reflection. This struggle or conflict within us creates interest by providing an instrument in which the reader can relate to what the character is experiencing. I believe this is what draws the reader into the story and keeps their interest. To help examine this this probability, I have chosen two stories from this course’s reading requirements. The first story I have considered is by Leo Tolstoy titled “The Death of Ivan Ilych”.

“How should life be lived?” This is a question that people repeatedly ask themselves during their life. Outside influences, such as the media, celebrities, and peer pressure force people to search for the answer to this question. As a result, many books have been written about how life should be lived, one of these being The Death of Ivan Ilych. In this novella, Leo Tolstoy tells the reader how to live a good life by describing the life and death of someone who lived “the simplest, the most ordinary, and the most awful” kind of life (95). Tolstoy achieves his purpose by using different figures of speech; specifically, he uses irony to demonstrate how Ivan, the main character, lived a bad life, personification to show why he lived a bad life, and rhetorical questions to explain how life should be lived.

In "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy, he shows how the majority of society is selfish. Tolstoy suggests how even though there is so much selfishness in society, there are some exceptional people who do not follow social conventions and are the prime example of how people in a society should be. This paper will argue that being selfless is important in society and that people should deviate from individualistic behavior and concentrate more on the collective behavior. Through this careful examination it will be revealed that although a person should think about how to advance themselves in the social hierarchy, it cannot be their only goal and people need to combine it with it a more humanistic goal as well.

Count Leo Tolstoy's novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, was published in 1886. Despite being written over 100 years ago, it contains themes and ideas that are universal and still applicable today. These themes include mortality, authenticity of life, and suffering. Mortality, or transiency of life, is central in Tolstoy's novella. Like most people, the main character, Ivan, ignores his mortality until he becomes sick. In chapter 6, Ivan recalls studying Keiswetter's philosophy, and the idea of mortality (1464). Tolstoy writes, "And Caius is indeed mortal and and it's right that he should die... for me it's quite different. And it cannot be that I should die" (1464). Ivan can not grasp that he has to face death just like everyone else. Among

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things,” quoth the great French philosopher Rene Descartes. This also essentially describes the meaning of Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych.” For if there was ever a man who but once and only once dared to doubt all things for the sake of truth, it was Ivan Ilych.This becomes evident when Mr. Ilych undergoes a profound spiritual reassessment as death draws nearer to him and a final spiritual reconciliation when he finally passes away at the end of the story. Specifically, Ivan Ilych undergoes this transformation as his death draws near and the falsity of the life he has lead dawns upon him in the very twilight of his life. This leads to a final reconciliation with the reality of his past