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Psychological analysis of death: the death of ivan illych essay
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In life we often think about death and what our life has become. We never suspect that we will become ill and die, and we very rarely agonize over weather our life is what it should be until its too late, as demonstrated in Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych." Throughout Tolstoy's life he was religious and enjoyed life, but then as he reached the height of his fame and fourteen he began to question everything he had once believed in. Some people think that "The Death of Ivan Ilych" holds a lot of symbolism between the story and Tolstoy's life. In "The Death of Ivan Ilych" there is a lot of symbolism of life and death as compared to Tolstoy's life.
Ivan Ilych was a man of success. He set out to achieve his goals, and make his money. He married the women he loved and had two beautiful children, living the good life with money and accomplishment. He didn't have normal worries like most working class people did, he just did what he set out to do and succeeded at that. It is noted that "Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." (Arp, 512) Until one day he became sick. For months he laid in bed in agonizing pain, and the doctors were left without agreeing knowledge on what he had. Close to the end of his life he began to wonder if his life was really what it should have been and whether or not he achieved all he was supposed to. He questioned death as if to ask "What is this? Can it be death?......Why these sufferings?"(Arp, 553) The reader is now left with the question did he die from physical pain or from mental anguish also? It could be said that when he was dealing with his impending death he went through five psychological stages. First he went through denial and ignored the fact that he might be dying. He ignored his pain until it got to bad to cure. Second he went through anger. He became angry at his condition and took it out on his family, friends and servants. Then he went through a short period of bargaining, when he took communion for his wife he thought to himself "To live! I want to live!" (Arp, 556) All he wanted was to live his life like he knew he should have. The fourth stage was depression. This is the period he went through right before he realized he was going to die. He felt that it would just be better if he died when he realized "Yes, I am making them wretched,' he thought. 'They are sorr...
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...ndress uniform and went to the law courts." (Arp, 530-531) No one however, would know whether or not Ivan or the "Unknown Citizen" were hurt or gone because "Had anything been wrong, should certainly have heard." (Arp, 672) Not everyone is as observant to one persons needs as they should be.
In the "Death of Ivan Ilych" the symbolism of death is very important. It shows that we should always look to the future and what we may become rather then the present and what we want at that moment. Will we turn out to be what we wanted to be, and live the fullest life possible. Its only up to us to decide that. Ivan Ilych was beginning to decide that when it was to late. In everyday life we take for granted that our values are sound and the projects and activities we take on are worth doing. We never take a "step back" to realize that maybe we are doing something good or that maybe we're not. We mainly concern ourselves with how we look in the end. That is something we should stop doing. We should follow the example of Ivan Ilych and make sure we live our lives to the fullest instead of realizing it when its to late. We should be like Tolstoy and realize that life is worth living.
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
He realizes that he is dying from this illness by himself. Since this is the case, he begins going through the stages not whenever the doctor says “you only have x amount of time to live”, but whenever the doctor avoids giving him a definite answer to his question if the illness is dangerous or not. This is where Ivan starts his stage of denial. Even the narrator foretells this denial by the satirical comment about Ivan’s life: “and it was all very well.” (pg. 22) After he sees the doctor it is written that Ivan says: “maybe in fact it’s all right…” (pg. 25) He begins to be interested with other people’s health, and “tried to make himself think that he was better.” (pg. 25) A sign that we see Ivan’s denial clearly is from his action of “constantly consulting doctors”. (pg. 26) Kubler-Ross said that a patient “went shopping around” for different doctors. Through his denial, he began also to have fits of anger. These would continue to happen until shortly before his actual death. The biggest torment for him was that everyone was living a lie. No one would acknowledge that he was dying and he and they both knew it. Another thing that caused his anger was when someone (usually his wife) would disturb his peace. If they took him out of his pleasantness, it reminded of him of his illness and then would get agitated. The anger continued to grow. He even got angry at
Indicate, as well, the ways, in which these individuals help or hinder Ivan Ilych’s spiritual growth.
In the early eighteenth-century, a letter from Peter the Great’s court was sent to Russian publishers declaring that all material must be printed with the intention to maintain “The glory of the great sovereign and his tsardom and for the general usefulness and profit of the nation” (The Cambridge History of Russia). The effects of this proclamation reverberated throughout Russia for centuries and laid the foundation on which future rulers such as Catherine the Great and later Alexander III fortified the position of the censor. The strengthening of the Russian censor, consequently, manipulated and stifled the country’s most influential wordsmiths. No Russian writer was safe from the censor, not even a master like Leo Tolstoy. Specifically,
Do we plan how we live our own life without following the society or do we live a life that follow what people in the higher level of society consider to be proper. Choosing how to live our life? However even if you chooses to dictate your own life without following what the society tells you to do; can you really achieve that freedom? In two book the “Death of Van Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy and “Hedda Gabler” by Henrik Ibsen we’ll see two different person who choose to walk two different path.
The short story “The Death of Ivan Ilych” is about a man who realizes he is dying and that no one in his life cares about him. Even more disappointing for Ivan is the realization that besides his success as a high court judge, he has done nothing else to make his life worth saving. The death of Ivan Ilyich, sadly, comes as a release of stress to all. In the end, Ivan is soothed by the release of death, his family and friends are relieved of having responsibility of Ivan taken off their shoulders, and the reader is released from the stressful journey. Tolstoy teaches the audience through the structural elements of the “black sack” metaphor and pathos about the unavoidability of death and the relief of accepting it.
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.
middle of paper ... ... He is trying to teach us that although Ivan died while he was trying to convert to Christianity, he died unsatisfied and in agony because the process was not yet finished. Most people live more Christian lives than Ivan Ilyich, but if they are never able to live their lives in a completely Christian manner, they will have the same outcome Ivan. It may occur on their deathbed, or in the afterlife, but even if it is unconscious, they will suffer with the knowledge that they did not live their lives to the fullest of their abilities.
identical. Both characters were in isolation prior to the initial plot of the books, but for
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
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
In his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy satirizes the isolation and materialism of Russian society and suggests that its desensitized existence overlooks the true meaning of life—compassion. Ivan had attained everything that society deemed important in life: a high social position, a powerful job, and money. Marriage developed out of necessity rather than love: “He only required of it those conveniences—dinner at home, housewife, and bed—which it could give him” (17). Later, he purchased a magnificent house, as society dictated, and attempted to fill it with ostentatious antiquities solely available to the wealthy. However, “In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves” (22). Through intense characterizations by the detached and omniscient narrator, Tolstoy reveals the flaws of this deeply superficial society. Although Ivan has flourished under the standards of society, he fails to establish any sort of connection with another human being on this earth. Tragically, only his fatal illness can allow him to confront his own death and reevaluate his life. He finally understands, in his final breath, that “All you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from you” (69).
According to Kubler-Ross’s theory, the first cycle is denial. Denial in this case is the individual denying that they are dying. When the individual resists the reality that they are going to die. “Then where shall I be when I am no more? Could this be dying? No I don’t want to!” (Tolystoy, “TdofII” p127), Ivan may have felt that he would be leaving too much behind if he were to die: worrying about where he’ll after he dies and refusing to something that cannot be stopped. Concerned mostly about losing his luxuries, he was clearly afraid and couldn’t accept he was dying as shown in this quote. “In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.” (Tolystoy, “TdofII” p129).
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s classic novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a short novel about a prisoner trying to survive a Soviet labor camp, known as the Gulag. Socialist realism was the style of literature that was widely spread throughout Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. Therefore, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich consists mainly of socialist realist literature intended to function as Communist propaganda, through optimistic and positive portrayals of workers’ satisfaction on collective farms and in government factories. Although Joseph Stalin seems to romanticize the notion of work to his followers — even attempting to praise and glorify them for it — the reality is that Stalin and the Soviet Union manipulate workers’ concept
Then novel War and Peace was written by a famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy in 1865. The novel describes the war with Napoleon in which many countries were involved such as Russia, Austrian, Prussia, Spain, Sweden, and Britain. The novel mainly focuses on Russia. It reflects the different views and participation in the war of Russian aristocracy and peasants and also shows Tolstoy’s negative viewpoint on the war.