The Authentic Life In Death Of Ivan Ilyich

It is not until Ivan falls ill and is close to death, does he realize he lived “a most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible life”, meaning that he wasted his life by living by propriety; it is also through Ivan’s sickness and suffering that he’s able to find redemption as well as the true meaning of life.

    In the face of Morrie's overwhelming compassion and tenderness, Ivan Ilych presents an opposite lifestyle. After a pleasantly carefree childhood he turned towards ambition and pursued an ever-larger salary and an ever-increasing social rank. Ivan lived without values and without attachments, easily moving between cities and jobs. He cared little for the great inconvenience of his family, and even less for his wife: "he hate[d] her with his whole soul" (Ivn, 139). Commitment was a prison to be avoided at all costs, a detriment to his proper and official existence. Genuine love touched Ivan only rarely and certainly not during the dying moments when he needed it the most.

Tolstoy’s shows in this novel what can happen when you live life by your own rules and what can happen when you live by societies rules such as Ivan Ilyich. He shows that both choices come with major consequences. In this story Ivan Ilyich had two brothers one older and one younger. The older

The story opens in an unusual but significant way. Rather than tell the reader of Ivan’s early years, Tolstoy presents the dead Ivan stretched out at home, attended by his wife and closest

Ivan felt isolated as he neared death. Most people who knew Ivan acknowledged his illness but not the fact that he was dying which aggravated him, “What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill” (40). Ivan felt deceived by everyone else because no one accepted that his days were limited. Ivan felt secluded since many people ignored the gravity of his condition and did not pay much attention to him.

The life of Ivan Ilyich, we are told, "had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible" (Tolstoy, Ch. 2).  In analyzing this description of Ivan's life, we see that Ivan has always done what is expected of him in the eyes of others (wife, co-workers,

Initially, Tolstoy presents himself with a formidable challenge, eliciting compassion for a character that does not ostensibly deserve any sympathy. However, Tolstoy expands Ivan Ilyich into a complex protagonist with artless

Tolstoy, in other hand, immerses a reader into a short life story of the protagonist, starting from his family origins, to his youth and his adult life. The misleading nature of Ivan Ilyich’s existence is demonstrated from the very beginning of novella which accurately describes the illusory reality the main character is living in. The reader might be curious why the normal and ordinary life could be horrible. It is not much possible that Tolstoy was against ordinariness itself, but rather to show the reader that the main character Ivan Ilyich never reaches anything meaningful and exciting in his life. Ivan becomes kind of a prisoner of social milieu, he does everything that is expected of him: he goes to law school just like his father did, he finds a job, gets promoted, earns enough money to enjoy his life, fulfills his duty. He becomes kind of a spiritual zombie. Tolstoy describes main character’s absence of “real” life in a subtle but authentic way, showing that Ivan is not much different from the people in his circle. As an inventor of his own illusion, or the “lie”, in which main character lives, Ivan is not showing much curiosity, moreover he is not in search of any kind of truth. He simply exists in his undisturbed, tranquil environment, until something unpredictable happens to him. During one of his ordinary actions, while hanging the new curtains in his new house, he slips, falls down, banging his side against the window frame. This

Along with these types of friends and living in this kind of society, Ivan also becomes greedy on the material that he can gain in the life. Even at the early time, Tolstoy describes Ivan with all kinds of virtues, “a capable, cheerful, good-natured, and sociable man” (746). It is no doubt that all these virtues definitely contribute Ivan to become a successful person. However, as Tolstoy characterize Ivan “succumbed to sensuality, to vanity.” All these virtues don’t lead him to get to the right path, but into the goal of seeking for material need.

Ivan Ilyich lives a carefree life that is "most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible". Like everyone he knows, he spends his life climbing the social ladder. Enduring marriage to a woman whom he often finds too demanding, he works his way up to be a magistrate, thanks to the influence he has over a friend who has just been promoted, focusing more on his work as his family life becomes less tolerable.

But it is impossible to say that," and he remembered all the legality, correctitude, and propriety of his life. That at any rate can certainly not be admitted, he thought, and his lips smiled ironically as if someone could see that smile and be taken in by it. There is no explanation! Agony, death....What for?" (X, 19-20). Ivan is in turmoil about his life, pain, suffering and death. Ivan is also alone and lonely. “He had but to call to mind what he had been three months before and what he was now, to call to mind with what regularity he had been going downhill, for every possibility of hope to be shattered. Latterly during the loneliness in which he found himself as he lay facing the back of the sofa, a loneliness in the midst of a populous town and surrounded by numerous acquaintances and relations but that yet could not have been more complete anywhere—either at the bottom of the sea or under the earth—during that terrible loneliness Ivan Ilych had lived only in memories of the past” (X, 7-9). Ivan is a very influential man and has many acquaintances and relatives yet he is alone and fears

In his novella, The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy offers his audience a glance into the life and death of an ambitious man, Ivan Ilych. Tolstoy uses the death of Ivan Ilyich to show his audience the negative consequences of living the way Ilych did. Ivan Ilych followed society and made decisions based on what others around him conformed to and not so much about what he genuinely wanted until he was on his deathbed. As death approaches Ilych he realizes that he wrecked everything that should be meaningful in his life in order to work and make money and in the end his friends did not really care much about him. Ilych’s desire to conform made him live a miserable life and led him to darkness. Ivan Ilych attained everything that society

The main character comes down with a deathly illness. At this moment he accepts his mortality also consequentially except everything that is wrong with him physically and metaphorically. ”Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible"(2.1). Although not only has he realized the terrible choices he has made but he is also coming to terms with the fact he must die knowing he made these choices. For Ivan there is no going back, he has no chance to fix or make up for the wrong doing he has done it's just over and he must painfully live with this agony and realize it until he takes his last breath that nothing can be

One of the themes of Tolstoy’s story of The Death of Ivan Ilych is detachment from life, considering that all material things can substitute the true meaning of life: compassion and care for others. “Everywhere in the novel, Tolstoy speaks of Iván Ilych's desire for propriety, decorous living, and pleasantness all while making this his first and most important priority. This motivation is a poor

Ivan, like many others in his ranking are known for their crass materialism. As stated in the text, “having received money from his father for his equipment Ivan Ilyich ordered himself clothes at Scharmer’s, the fashionable tailor, hung a medallion inscribed respice finem on his watch-chain, took leave of his professor and the prince who was patron of the school” (Tolstoy 747). Ivan is fixated on impressing others with his fancy and expensive clothing. He also lives in a typical home like other people of his status. Ivan lives his life to others’