The Death Of Ivan Ilyich

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.

Marx thought of capitalism in a pessimistic way, he saw the relationship between the employee and employer in a capitalistic society as toxic. To Marx, in a capitalistic society the employee would always be at a constant struggle for power be never endlessly repressed by the bourgeoisie. The employer would pay employees only what they needed to survive making it impossible to move up in class or society. He also recognized that in capitalism everything becomes corporatized. Things like marriage go from a sacred bond between two individuals that once never included money or the government, to something that is regulated by the national government and must be done through the federal court and include ties between the individual's financial status. Small businesses would also become corporatized, a local family doctor has now become part of a larger practice that brings in complex forms of payment such as insurance instead of simply paying a small family doctor directly. He also goes into the downfall of capitalism. The way capitalism works is through a series of economic highs and lows, each high is marked by prosperous times, high employment rate, and overall happiness. But the lows are marked by deterioration of the national economy, low employment rates, and struggle for all classes. To Marx’s these highs and lows are what's killing capitalism with each low being worse than the last until the people revolt and create a new form of government. The next would be socialism and once this fell like capitalism, the new governing system would be communism. Communism is an ideal system where people are never struggling for money and are paid based on their needs rather than their particular job. Through this system a

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

Marx’s issue with society was that people felt alienated and estranged, mostly from their work. Marx saw the entire capitalist economic system, though a necessary stage in human development, as unjust. He blamed capitalism for the alienation people felt, identifying their need to sell their labor and work in unfulfilling jobs as the root of their dissatisfaction. He took issue with the dehumanization capitalism causes, as people are seen as a commodity and their individuality is sacrificed for industry and the success of their

Ivan life is very ironic and threw his entire life he plays a big facade in front of people,but he is really different inside than how he performs or acts around the public eye.

Marx's ideas on labor value are very much alive for many organizations working for social change. In addition, it is apparent that the gap between the rich and poor is widening on a consistent basis. According to Marx, the course of human history takes a very specific form which is class struggle. The engine of change in history is class opposition. Historical epochs are defined by the relationship between different classes at different points in time. It is this model that Marx fleshes out in his account of feudalism's passing in favor of bourgeois capitalism and his prognostication of bourgeois capitalism's passing in favor of proletarian rule. These changes are not the reliant results of random social, economic, and political events; each follows the other in predictable succession. Marx responds to a lot of criticism from an imagined bourgeois interlocutor. He considers the charge that by wishing to abolish private property, the communist is destroying the "ground work of all personal freedom, activity, and independence". Marx responds by saying that wage labor does not properly create any property for the laborer. It only creates capital, a property which works only to augment the exploitation of the worker. This property, this capital, is based on class antagonism. Having linked private property to class hostility, Marx

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

Opening his book with one short sentence he is able to set the historical context of his argument, frame the perspective from which he views society, and engage the reader in reflective thought that will set the tone for this compelling critique of society. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (9) Viewing society from the perspective of the classes - a class being a group of people who share a role within the economy - Marx argues that all of history can be boiled down into the classes struggle for power. This inherently antagonistic relationship is the basis from which Marx trains his analysis and commentary. “[In] our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie…society…is…splitting up into two hostile camps…bourgeoisie and proletariat” (9) A one sided relationship between the working class, or proletariat 's and the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. The loser of this relationship is the proletariat, “... A class of laborer, who live only so long as they find work, and who finds work so long as their labors increase capital.” (15) Marx claims the working class contends with ever increasing worsening conditions until an eventual and inevitable revolt against their masters, the bourgeoisie.

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.

As the bourgeois advanced financially, they also gained political influence. They progressed from a once oppressed class to an independent urban republic. As their political influence increased, certain changes became clear. The bourgeois had “torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation (Marx).” This force eventually grew to the point that it was able to force other nations to conform to its values and methods or suffer extinction. As the bourgeois became richer, the proletarians began to suffer more. The balance of property began to shift even more rapidly than before leaving property “concentrated…in a few hands (Marx).” Eventually, the super-efficient production of the manufacturing economy began to take its toll on the bourgeois as well as the proletarians. More goods were produced due to the cheaper costs and ease of manufacture leading to an over-production of goods (Marxism). Over-production became a serious problem, resulting with widespread unemployment of the proletarians, and threats of a revolution on the horizons.

The elegant image of a bourgeois society with its emphasis on wealth and property, is only a mirage. Underneath it all is a different world of oppression—specifically, for women in the bourgeois class. In Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler and Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, both works depict female characters in the bourgeois class who face the societal oppression and cope with it in their own way. These oppressions are often set off by the male characters, constructed by the bourgeois society.

There is deep substance and many common themes that arose throughout Marx’s career as a philosopher and political thinker. A common expressed notion throughout his and Fredrick Engels work consists of contempt for the industrial capitalist society that was growing around him during the industrial revolution. Capitalism according to Marx is a “social system with inherent exploitation and injustice”. (Pappenheim, p. 81) It is a social system, which intrinsically hinders all of its participants and specifically debilitates the working class. Though some within the capitalist system may benefit with greater monetary gain and general acquisition of wealth, the structure of the system is bound to alienate all its

Karl Marx came up later with a theory of a classless society to help the working class fight back. Marx came up with many radical ideas to change the way society was proceeding socially which, caused him to be banished from his native land in Germany and then from France, eventually he ended up in England. (Compton's Encyclopedia, 121) Karl Marx believed that social conflict was needed for society to function. He showed people not to be scared of conflict but rather to except it as a way of life. Karl Marx believes that people have a "class consciousness" which means that people are aware of differences between one another and that it causes a separation between groups of people. People mostly look at material objects for a sense of class status. If you are wealthy in life then you have many material objects and if you are poor then you have very little. People need to be educated in order to move up in society, which is why the working class people rarely have a chance to be very successful. Karl Marx realized that the working class deserved more then they were receiving and he tried to help the situation. Marx wanted the wealthy people and the poor to become more economically equal in status. Karl Marx also discusses the economic issues that the working class faces with change. With capitalism growing there is a greater need for production in the factories. More products need to be produced and at

‘Every form of society has been on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes…The modern labourer instead of rising with the process of industry, he becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. Here it becomes evident that thy bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society…Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, and it’s existence is no longer compatible with society…’ (Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party 1847)