Ivan Ilyich Character Analysis

Beside the physical changes, Ivan Ilyich becomes very rude to the people around him, especially his wife after his illness. While he and his wife always had some conflicts, things become especially tense after Ivan's illness. It goes so far as Ivan wishing thinking about how "... he hated her from the bottom of his soul" as she kissed him goodnight. This feeling goes both ways, as Tolstoy writes about how Praskovya felt that..." her husband had a dreadful temper and made her life miserable... and how..."she hated her husband. She began to wish he would die..." By contrast, at the funeral, Ivan's so-called friends seem unaffected by Ivan's death. Whether or not the illness changed them, we don't know, since we didn't see what they were like

before. However, Peter Ivanovich's view of death certainly changes after he sees Ivan's lifeless body in his grave.

He becomes scared of his own death as he realizes that one day, he will die like everyone else. During his times of suffering, Ivan begins to fear death and asks why this is happening to him. While he had superficial relationships with everyone in his life, Ivan was satisfied with his position in life. On his deathbed, Ivan's view changes. He wonders if he did not live his life to the fullest and if he could've done more. Due to his illness, he eventually comes to peace with the idea that it is time for him to die and to no longer be a burden to his family any longer. In ______, the parents are in a support group and talking about their problems about their children with a group of other parents. They said that their daughter's decisions and caused them much grief and ripped their world apart. How do (or should) doctors interact with patients? In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the doctors are not interested in answering Ivan's questions and don't really seem to care about his concerns. While it is important in some cases to distance yourself from the patient as a doctor, the doctors in Ivan Ilyich should have been more empathetic towards Ivan's

problems. In the Thucydides text, the doctors tried to help and they were the ones who died during the plague. This is different from the Death of Ivan Ilyich, as here, the doctors were caught up in the middle of the chaos and died. In the Death of Ivan Ilyich, the doctors took a laissez-faire approach and survived.

What about the tolls of caregiving? Only Gerasim seems to truly care about Ivan (and vice versa) when he gets sick, even though he is of lower social status. Ivan's wife, although condescending at times, regularly reminds him to take his medicines. Ivan's wife even..." considered herself dreadfully unhappy" during Ivan's illness. It is interesting to note that she does not feel unhappy due to his illness, but more so the fact that if Ivan dies, she will have nobody to pay the bills. Where can a work of fiction or poetry go that a medical text cannot go? In essence, it shows the emotional aspect of an illness. For example, my mother was in and out of hospitals a few years ago, and still is today; but nothing like before. Her disease affected my whole family and myself as well. In some ways, it brought us closer together as we would go visit her in the hospital together and really brought us closer together. That's is something a medical text cannot do; show how an illness impacts everyone involved. A work of fiction or poetry also shows how the doctors, the patient, the patient's family, and the people surrounding the patient are impacted by a disease. For someone on the outside looking in, an illness is a bunch of symptoms, the diagnosis, and the prognosis. For someone with a firsthand account, it shows the pain, drama, sorrow, and struggle to cope with the disease.