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How does art relate to religion
The death of ivan ilyich critical essay
The main theme of the death of Ivan Ilyich
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Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich
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 key point here is the “painfully insignificant”(Simpson). Depression snuck up on me like old age will, forty times quicker. Ilyich manages to cover his depression by compartmentalizing his feelings from his thoughts and by becoming a workaholic. Doing this, he had a means of either dismissing his depression or drowning it in work.
Ivan Ilyich did not notice his depression and lack of spirituality until three days prior to his death. It is not until Ilyich asks himself, “What if my whole life has really been wrong?”(Tolstoy 1203), and comes up with an affirmitave answer that Ilyich tries to find a way to rectify his situation. His solution is painfully simple, spare his family the heartache of his dying and to just get it over with.
My solution was quite different. I came up with two simple rules. The number one rule of feeling better is to help strangers whenever possible. For example, last Wednesday, my car broke down on Route 7. I did not have a cell-phone and there wasn’t a payphone in sight. Since I had a paper due, I started hitchhiking to class. After about five minut...
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...d Western doctrines. He also points out Ilyich’s total lack of spirituality and the feeling of a wasted life. Simpson points out these differences and includes Biblical quotes to back it up with great insight, getting to a level of depth that could confuse some readers but has shown this reader something I would never have thought of on my own.
Novel Analysis: Death of Ivan Illich. 12 April 2001 This author explains how Ilyich’s life is a ‘front’ for the sake of propriety. Also, the author points out that Ilyich is not aware of this until just days before he dies. A very short interpretation, but one that completely backs me up.
Note:
All quotes from Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich are from the following edition:
Literature: Reading and Writing the Human Experience. Seventh ed. Ed. Richard Abcarian and Marvin Klotz. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy tells the story of Ivan Ilyich, a man who deals with a mysterious illness through introspection. Until his illness, he lived the life he thought he was supposed to live. Like Candide, he was living in blind optimism. He assumed that what he was doing was the right thing because he was told as much. He had a respectable job and a family. Happiness, if it did occur to him, was fulfilling his duties as a husband and father. It was his sudden illness that allowed him to reflect on his choices, concluding that those choices did not make him happy. “Maybe I have lived not as I should have… But how so when I did everything in the proper way” (Tolstoy 1474)? Ilyich had been in a bubble for his entire life, the bubble only popping when he realizes his own mortality. This puts his marriage, his career, and his life choices into perspective. Realizing that he does not get to redo these choices, he distances himself from his old life: his wife, his children, and his career. All that is left is to reflect. This reflection is his personal enlightenment. He had been living in the dark, blind to his true feelings for his entire life. Mortality creates a space in which he can question himself as to why he made the choices he made, and how those choices created the unsatisfactory life he finds himself in
Tolstoy provided us with two perspectives to view Ivan’s life in “The death of Ivan Illyich”: an omniscient narrator and Ivan himself. What I plan to do is give another perspective, not necessarily to view his life, but rather to his experiences after he realized he was dying. This perspective will be an analytical and psychological; the perspective from Kubler-Ross’s Stages of death (or stages of grief, as they are better known for). These stages occur when we are faced with an event that is usually connected with death. The “normal” order in which these five stages occur, though may not go doctrinally in this order, are as such: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.
Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Fort Worth: Harcourt, 1994.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
Meyer, Michael, ed. Thinking and Writing About Literature. Second Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
Abcarian, Richard. Literature: the Human Experience : Reading and Writing. : Bedford/Saint Martin's, 2012. Print.
The brutal attacks by Russian soldiers can also be likened to Nicholas I’s suppression of dissent in the rest of the Russian empire, particularly political dissent. When he was deciding on the public punishment of a...
Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Trans. Lynn Solotaroff. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.
Ivan has a strong disconnect with his family and begins feel like he is always suffering, while beginning to question if his life has been a lie. An example of this for prompt number three is when we are giving the quote "Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." Leo Tolstoy implies through the quote that even though he lives an ordinary
Abcarian, Richard, Marvin Klotz, and Samuel Cohen. Literature: the Human Experience. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. Print.
Literature: Reading and Writing about the Human Experience. 7th ed. of the book. New York: St. Martin's, 1998.
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
Jordan, June. Memo: 1980 Literature Reading and Writing The Human Experience. Donna Erickson. New York: St. Martins Press, 1998. Page 158.
I think many people have experienced the feelings that Ivan has felt. You just try to manage to get through the day. Everyone wants to believe that they are special and have great fulfilling lives but never do. It is no ones fault but their own, in order to have greatness you must work for it. You have to take risks and if you don't you’ll end up like Ivan Ilych and regret your entire
Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. Print.