Death’s Implications: Analyzing The Death of Ivan Illych Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illych has proven to be a profoundly important work in the understanding of mortality. By adding to this understanding, Tolstoy implores readers to accept the ultimate reality that death is inevitable. If there is one thing Tolstoy makes quite clear, it is that nobody lives forever and death can be a horrifying, painful, and sobering experience. Ivan Illych, a successful man of the law, ends up fatally injuring himself whilst putting up curtains. With his health in decline, the reader gets to experience death through Ivan’s eyes. Tolstoy attempts to have the reader feel the same anxiety that Ivan feels and in some sense the same pain. And indeed, Tolstoy brilliantly conveys this agony to the reader. Specifically, Tolstoy decides to focus on two very important threads of the cloth that makes up death. From Ivan Illych’s perspective, Tolstoy focuses on regret with one’s life and the utterly different mindset the dying adopt versus the living. For Ivan Illych, climbing the social ladder of entrenched Russian bourgeois society was the ultimate goal. Particularly, Ivan would use his career in the law to allow him to obtain such heights. This led to Ivan placing his family on the back burner whilst his own career and ambitions would enter the limelight. Once the end is near however, Ivan begins to feel regret take hold of himself. “It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he has not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true … his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false” (Tolstoy ... ... middle of paper ... ...ty. Therefore, death can be a very lonely experience that isolates people. George R.R. Martin once said, “Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.” Indeed, death is the ultimate reality that we all must face. Leo Tolstoy’s main character Ivan Illych, faced this reality himself. And unfortunately, Ivan Illych faced his end painfully full of regret. While the The Death of Ivan Illych is an exploration of mortality, it also sends a very distinct message. It’s not too hard to gather that Leo Tolstoy wants his readers to live a fulfilling life. Instead of focusing purely on careers and social status, it’s more important to focus on family, love, and friendship. Also, it’s a key part of life to accept that death is inevitable. It’s simply unrealistic to live in denial with dreams of immortality. In essence, live life happily because it’s too short.
Outside knowledge is gained by reading or by being taught something from a teacher. From reading the book The Death of Ivan Ilych, I gained outside knowledge about the upper class. In the beginning of the book Ivan Ilych passed away. The book is all about how his coworkers take his death throughout the book. The book mentions:
Leo Tolstoy, author of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, suffered numerous tragic losses such as his parents and his aunt, Tatyana Ergolsky who created a tremendous impact during Tolstoy’s childhood. Overtime, Tolstoy was cultured and for Tolstoy it was common within his community. During the 1840, Tolstoy developed a strong, eager interest for the studies of moral philosophy. In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy suggests that although people can find happiness in materialism, they need spirituality during a crisis.
“Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” – Omniscient narrator (Tolstoy 746)
When I know that money doesn’t matter in life it’s the connections to people and your family that make your life mean something special. While Ivan is screaming for two hours in bed in pain he says to his family “forgive”, but it came out “forget.” This is when he is fighting death and notices that his whole life he has been living it wrong and took everything for granted. As long as he and his wife “ moved in the best circles and there home was frequented by people of importance and by the young.”(Tolstoy 61) Ivan regretted all of this because he noticed that he was not just killing himself but his family as well. It took Ivan way to long in my opinion to see all the problems in his life, his wife and son truly loved the man and just wanted a happy family instead of the game they been playing. Both of these two men were trying to find away from death in their lives but always new it was coming you could say it was
What would you do if you knew you were dying? Some people go out and do crazy things with their last days on earth. Other people spend time making their lives right and spend time with family or friends. To be honest, I am really not sure what I would do. In this paper, I am going to compare Leo Tolstoy’s title character in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” to Chi Tien-Hsin’s unnamed character in “Man of La Mancha”. Both men are faced with death. Ivan knows for certain that he is close to death. On the other hand, the guy in “Man of La Mancha” does not have a chronic illness. The way that these two men behave when they are thinking about dying is completely different. The way they act shows their overall character, and it shows what kind of person
Tolstoy immediately absorbs you into the novel by beginning with Ivan’s death. The actual death scene is saved until the end of the novel, but he shows you the reaction of some of Ivan’s colleagues as they hear the news of Ivan’s death. You are almost disgusted at the nonchalant manner that Ivan’s “friends” take his death. They are surprised by his death, but immediately think of how his death will affect their own lives, but more importantly, their careers. “The first though that occurred to each of the gentlemen in the office, learning of Ivan Ilyich’s death, was what effect it would have on their own transfers and promotions.” (pg 32) As a reader, you have to wonder how Ivan must have had to live in order for people close to him to feel no sadness towards the loss or even pity for his wife. In fact, these gentlemen are exactly like Ivan. The purpose of their lives was to gain as much power as possible with n...
Ivan Ilyich, a decorous man with a life deemed perfect by society, gradually becomes aware of his life’s dark secrets, which cause him to feel excluded from his family and society. The tone is set by Tolstoy in the very beginning of the novella - as Ivan Ilyich’s colleagues receive the news of Ilyich’s death, the first thing they can think about is whom amongst them will receive a promotion. Moreover, at the funeral, Ilyich’s wife worriedly asks his colleague for some advice about her pension. These events foreshadow how “Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible” (1427). Ilyich leads the life society tells him to lead, which first becomes clear before he decides to marry - “The marriage gave him personal satisfaction, and at the same time it was considered the right thing by the most highly placed of his associates” (pg. 1430). And even though he is disgusted with law, he considers it righteous and honorable when he see...
Why does the story begin with the death? Most books use mystery in the beginning and announce the death at the end. But Tolstoy used a different chronology, he started with the death of Ivan and then uses a flashback to show the reader what really happened. Also he chooses to start with the death to make the story seem real and not fictional. At Ivan’s funeral, nobody seemed devastated by the loss of Ivan, which gave the reader an understanding of how little Ivan’s life meant to the people even the ones close to him. Later in the reading, but before his death Ivan questions how he lived his mortality life and what if he lived his life properly. Before his death he had come to the realization that his death would benefit all the others around him. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" begins with the death of Ivan in order to get it out of the way. In essence the
...t is . What really accentuated the story's realness was the cold-harsh fact that no one is exempt from death. This was given when Gerasim said to Ivan that everyone dies (p135). As the last book Tolstoy made before his conversion to Christianity: this book, delving deep into death, could reveal some clues about what the bible is trying to tell us about the truth of death. Is death the end, the process, or...the beginning? Who knows? One thing for certain is that every individual goes through the grief process a bit differently, and Tolstoy has proven that through his main character, Ivan Illych.
A vivid description of the state of mind behind the question is also to be found in Tolstoy's `My Confession', where the great Russian enquires, `Is there any meaning in life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?'
The story The Death of Ivan Ilych does a great job of explaining not only the events leading up to the death of Ivan Ilych, but what defines a person. Throughout the story, we get a deeper understanding of what character is and how it effects someone. Ivan had many different views of the world and in turn had many different character traits. Some of his traits were moral, some social, some were emotional. These traits are not only what makes up Ivan Ilych, but what defines a person. These traits are a persons
Ivan Ilych was a member of the Court of Justice who was "neither as cold and formal as his elder brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy mean between them—an intelligent, polished, lively, and agreeable man” (Tolstoy 102). He lived an unexceptionally ordinary life and strived for averageness. As the story progresses, he begins to contemplate his life choices and the reason for his agonizing illness and inevitable death. “Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done, but how could that be, when I did everything properly?” (Tolstoy
The story of In "The Death of Ivan Ilych", was written by Leo Tolstoy around who examines the life of a man, Ivan Ilyich, who would seem to have lived an exemplary life with moderate wealth, high station, and family. By story's end, however, Ivan's life will be shown to be devoid of passion -- a life of duties, responsibilities, respect, work, and cold objectivity to everything and everyone around Ivan. It is not until Ivan is on his death bed in his final moments that he realizes that materialism had brought to his life only envy, possessiveness, and non-generosity and that the personal relationships we forge are more important than who we are or what we own.
...roduction of Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 44 it is stated that “Ivan Ilych’s passage from life to death also entails a passage from falseness to truth…” (326). One could also look at this in a different light. From a physical perspective Ivan does go from life to death, from perfection to imperfection, but from a spiritual perspective it is actually the opposite. It takes the death of Ivan’s physical self to finally see what is important, his spirituality, his ‘divine spark.’ This, he finally realizes, is what true perfection is. Hence, Ivan is able to see past the falseness of conformity in the end and no longer fear death.
In Wislawa Szymborska’s poem, “On Death, without Exaggeration”, the idea of Death is assigned characteristics of Deaths waged war against numerous quantities of emerging life that, itself, destroys life. Szymborska grew up in Poland during the Second World War, she was surrounded by Death, in addition, the experiences she had helped her to cope with Death and remain hopeful. The poem seems to make the reader think Death is an inevitable part of life and in order to appreciate life one must accept Death. However, if you read closely in the last line of the second stanza, “which is always beside the point” (7), Death is revealed to be indifferent, not accepting. Szymborska uses persona, irony, and personification to create rich