Tolstoy's Influence on Notorious Leaders of the World Essay

In 1886, Leo Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich to express his philosophy of life; how it should be live and what truly matters most. According to Tolstoy, there are two principle ways to live: first, by outer appearance; a propriety; a standard of conduct and the second, by inner appearance and spiritual life in which he claims is “the real thing” that makes one’s life meaningful.

Leo Tolstoy wrote: The Death of Ivan Ilyich in 1886 to express his own view of how life should be lived and what truly matters most. According to Tolstoy, there are two ways of living life; first: by outer appearances a propriety; a decorum; and a standard of conduct. The second way is living by inner appearances and spiritual life in which he claims is “the real thing” that makes one’s life meaningful.

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”.

Leo Tolstoy, an incredible Russian writer, captures this idea in a quote; “The

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 desperate quest for existential meaning put him in distress. He first turned to the Russian Orthodox Church. However, he found the church and its institutions to be corrupt and voiced against them, which led to his excommunication. Additionally, he repudiated "all the sacraments, all miracles, the Holy Trinity, the immortality of the soul, and many other tenets of traditional religion," as Gary Saul Morson, Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, encapsulates in his Encyclopedia Britannica Online article, "Leo Tolstoy" (Morson). Tolstoy ultimately found solace in the teachings of Jesus Christ, especially, in the Sermon on the Mount. He admired Jesus not as a son of God, but, rather, as a sagacious mortal man. The religious teachings profoundly changed Tolstoy. He dressed in peasant clothing, rejected his wealth from past works, stripped himself of the title "Count," and championed the doctrine of turning the other cheek . His lifestyle acts as a foil to Ivan Ilych's, a bourgeois who wastes his life on petty, materialistic

Leo Tolstoy wrote: The Death of Ivan Ilyich in 1886 to expression his own view of how life should be lived and what actually matter most at the end. According to Tolstoy, there are 2 ways to live life; one is by outer appearances which are a propriety; a decorum; and a standard of conduct. The second way is living by inner appearances and spiritual life which is “the real thing” that makes one’s life worthwhile.

When becoming literate the most important thing a child can learn is that they can in fact learn in the way their school wants them to. They can be part of the school society and

The living environment always influences people subtly. Before exactly showing the proper image of Ivan to readers, Tolstoy paints the picture of the society where he lives in. Tolstoy unfolds the novella with the reaction of Ivan Ilyich’s closest friends to his death. Most of the time, when people heard someone died, the first reaction will be pity or sad about it. However, Ivan’s friends’ reaction of his death is quite calm.

From the lessons of living a good life to struggling with the inevitability of death, the critics review the moral lessons that are to be learned from reading the work. Some of the critical material claim that Tolstoy’s story is a depiction of bourgeois society and how the characters, in said society, are materialistic and selfish. While these elements do appear within the novella, it is, in my view, fictitious to claim that a person, who lives their life in the service of others, creating meaningful relationships, not worrying about the material things of life, would have an easier time dealing with death. But perhaps I am

Based on our discussions in class, our readings, video clips and the readings that discuss about the education provided in nineteenth century England for poor children and orphans who normally wouldn’t be able to afford it, there seems to be two sides to the story. One side you have a document by Robert Owen describing the importance of teaching poor children good morale habits and the interest of knowledge and a clip showing how Styal Mill School was teaching kids with multiple useful tools and even how to cure sickness and were even provided good beds . However on the other hand there’s plentiful of novels film adaptations such as the excerpts from Hard Times and Nicholas Nickleby both by Charles Dickens which both showcase the tough and

Fyodor Mihailovitch Dostoevsky was born on October 30th 1821, in the Moscow hospital for the poor where his father worked as a physician. The living Quarters which were provided for the family by the hospital were far from being adequate. Although the Dostoevsky originally came from the gentry, their financial status had not been promising. Existing on the edge, of poverty, Fyodor's childhood was lonely and overshadowed by the depressing atmosphere of the surroundings of the hospital and the constant quarrels at home. The ill temper of old Dostoevsky did little to bring happiness into the unfortunate circumstances in which the family had to live. Upon the death of his mother in 1837, Dostoevsky was sent to St. Petersburg to attend the College

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.

Strange as it may seem, the twenty-first century is a mere fourteen years old. Many events have taken place since the ball dropped on January 1, 2000: technologies have been developed, medicines have been created, wars have been fought, children have been born, games have been played, and music has been written. These advancements, however, did not happen passively. People, ordinary humans, with two hands and two feet, developed the technology, created the medicine, fought the wars, and played the games. Humans constantly make things happen; history comes about because people set wheels in motion. In Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Tolstoy wholeheartedly endorses individuals’ roles in events and scoffs at historians’ emphasis on the “great military leader.” Tolstoy insisted the various peoples of the world, not martial heroes, make history. To

TOLSTOY: This high class aristocrat turned simple living peasant, will warm the heart of any man with his ever lasting theme of universal love, never being a detail too short, all the way from Russia, Realist author Leo Tolstoy.