The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Don Quixote

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.

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

A sharp contrast is seen between the narration style of chapter 8 and 9 of Don Quixote. The seemingly flowing tale of Quixote and Basque’s great battle is abruptly halted, and then after much explanation regarding the finding and composition of the remainder, is the tale finally allowed to unfold.

Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It follows the adventures 

of Alonso Quixano, a retired elderly man who develops a fascination with chivalrous novels 

eventually become delusional, believing everything written to be true and currently going on in 

the Spanish country side where he lives (La Mancha). The novel itself contains a narration of 

Quixote’s adventures. These adventures are broken up into “Sally’s”. The first Sally feature 

Quixote’s first “quests”. After setting out early in the morning Quixote eventually wanders his 

way to an inn that he believes to be a castle, he asks the innkeeper who he believe to be a lord to 

dub him a knight. Have very little money Quixote’s spend the night in the stable with his horse, 

where he starts a fight with muleteers who are attempting to water their mules. Quixote’s take 

attempts to remove his gear from the trough as a threat and attacks the men. As a result the 

innkeeper tell Quixote’s to leave.


 Quixote’s next quest is that of “frees” a boy who is tied to a tree and being beaten by his 

master. After freeing the boy Quixote’s makes the master promise on a chivalric code to treat the 

boy fairly, upon leaving the beaten continues worse then it had previously been. His final quest is 

to defend the honor of his imagined lover, from traders he met on the road. After picking a fight 

with the traders Quixote’s is left badly wounded on the side of the road. He is found and

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist who mainly wrote novels and short stories. In the late 1870’s Tolstoy went through an inward crisis. He could not understand his existence, or that of mankind. He tried to overcome this crisis by seeking answers in religion. During his inward crisis he pondered the question of why he lived and what he lived for. Tolstoy thought out his solution: “Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God (creationism.org). Tolstoy believed that the meaning of life was to save one’s soul, and to save his soul he must live godly by renouncing the pleasures of life to labor, humble himself, suffer, and be merciful”(creationism.org). Tolstoy looked to Christianity to find the meaning of life. This period in his life is referred to as Tolstoy’s conversion. It was during this time that he wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich. In the story the Death of Ivan Ilyich, there are religious themes that Tolstoy has written into the story that reflect the theme of Christianity.

While on his deathbed he relives moments of his life, suddenly coming to the conclusion that he lived a fictitious life where he focused only on conforming to society, that he overlooked his relationships with people close to him. While dying Ivan gained self knowledge of his meaningless life and realized he could not change anything creating a crises. “Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done”(845). This was what Tolstoy meant when he said Ivan lived a terrible life. Instead of caring about his reputation and possessions, he “ought to” have tried to live a meaningful

The Death of Ivan Ilyich was a short, but is one of the greates of fiction. Ivan was a successful member of the state bureaucracy. Through out his life he had to do arrange it without complication. He is the perfect example of conforming, such as ‘’other-directed’’ man because he discovers the lies behind his successful life. The story opens with a deeplu significant way. The reader later on talks about Ivans early years. First, Tolstoy presents the death of Ivan. He told his wife and closets friends, Pete Ivanovitch. They were really worry about Ivan’s life than any other could be. They also worry about their own affairs. They pretend that feelings of ehat they do not feel. Ivans life could be concern for him after

Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a masterpiece in many senses of the word: at the time of its conception, it was hailed as a revolutionary work of literature that defined a genre, in later centuries regarded as an acerbic social commentary, a slightly misshapen romantic tragedy, and even as a synthesis of existentialist and post-modernist features. At the centre of this Spanish satirical chronicle is the perplexing character Don Quixote. Don Quixote’s personality and perspective is rapidly established fromsince the beginning of the novel, revealing unabashedly to readers that he is mad. The source of his madness lies in the extent to which Don Quixote acts on his delusions and projections unto reality as he saunters through Cervantes’ Andalusia. Don Quixote’s delusions have two primary functions in the novel: demonstrating the reality and tragedy of Cervantes’ manifestation of idyllic themes of love and chivalry, and revealing certain characteristics about narration.

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.

Though it may seem natural to desire a better place in society, this improvement may come at a price. In Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, Marx discusses the various problems that arise in society to due capitalism and how to solve these problems through communism. Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich focuses on a man whose capitalistic desires end up causing his own downfall. Tolstoy and Marx would argue that some of the biggest problems with capitalistic societies are that they cause individuals to put on a façade and display a false persona for society while also prioritizing the more superficial aspects of life such as material goods and social status over family relations. The result of such a society is a working class that is

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.

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.

In the story Pierre Menard presents two options how he could write his Quixote. The first option is that he, Pierre Menard, will become Cervantes, in that way that he will learn to speak 17th century Spanish, he will learn the history and examine the circumstances that were surrounding Cervantes while he was writing his Quixote. Of course, this option is denied as impossible (ironically, Borges says it too easy.)