Theme Of The Death Of Ivan Ilyich

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

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.

However, Ivan continues to refuse that living in accordance to what society deemed to be an ideal life because he despite the fact that he had little time left, he could not live with the idea that his life was wasted. In this realization of Ivan’s, Tolstoy conveys his message that leading an uncompassionate life that conforms to influence of the world around it leads to a life that is mostly not worth living and unhappiness in death because through Ivan’s pain, Tolstoy shows how a life similar to Ivan’s can only lead people into suffering 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.

He recognizes that in this time period, people treated death with shame. It is therefore associated with guilt on the part of the dying person and is considered unmentionable by those around this person (50). Though death is part of the human experience, Ivan Ilyich experiences this same sense of self-reproach. As he progresses closer to death, those around him, both family and friends, deny his looming fate and forced him into loneliness. They treat his death as though it were pornographic, in Gorer’s terms, and instead attempt to ignore Ivan’s state. Rather than treating death as an almost ceremonial process as in previous time periods, others see Ivan’s descent into death as a burden. He sees death negatively as both poisoning his own life and the lives of those around him (Tolstoy 24). Gorer’s theory would regard Ivan’s death not as a hilarious obscenity, but a taboo “pornographic” subject that is almost entirely disregarded by those close to him. Ivan’s wife, doctor, children, and friends all consider his death to be but a common illness rather than accept the truth of the matter of

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.”

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by world famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy may be a short piece, but it is also one of the greatest works of fiction in any language of the world, even to this day. In it, Tolstoy examines the shallowness of the bourgeoisie lifestyle and all that surrounds it. Ivan Ilyich is an extremely successful member of the state administration. Throughout his life he has carefully and meticulously adapted his personality to please his superiors, and peers, and to live a smooth life without any complications. He is the perfect example of the blind willingness of some people to conform to social and socio-economic norms. Only shortly before his death did he finally discover the true horror that lies behind the deceptive veil of his seemingly successful life.

     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.

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.

In Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, Ivan puts himself into a state of denial when it comes to his own mortality. In result of this, Ivan does not live his life authentically and virtuously. Essentially, he wastes his life, and he only comes to realize this on his deathbed. The ultimate goal in life is to live a fulfilling one, and a person who lives a life understanding their own mortality remembers to live life virtuously and authentically.