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Novel & Short Story
The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
Overview:
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) is a fictional novella by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
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❖ Leo Tolstoy’s life influence on his works:
In 1828 Leo Tolstoy was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Moscow
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In 1875 Tolstoy experienced a period of increasing depression and psychological crisis that was to
alter both his philosophy and his art
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The inevitability of death
overwhelmed him, and all formulations of life's meaning appeared to him shallow and valueless
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He was considered a religious guru
by many critics
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This faith
rescued them from despair and suffering and infused their life with meaning
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Tolstoy's religious philosophy serves as a
background to the understanding of the novel
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And just as Tolstoy's discovery of the true meaning of life led
him to fulfillment and an acceptance of death, so too, Ivan Ilych's awakening exposes him to the light
of a meaningful life and assuages his fear of dying
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The novel is a
fictional answer to the questions that plagued Tolstoy during the mid 1870s
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-Salma Tedjini

He also criticized his own works “Anna Karenina” and “War and peace” saying they were not written
for the purpose of educating people
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The peasants on
the other hand were the true embodiment of the true spirit of the christian faith
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- Tolstoy also criticized the “ideological state apparatus” which is the body of artists serving the
government through their writings
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- Tolstoy did not appreciate Shakespeare as he didn’t concern himself with the minorities of England,
his works had no moral principles and didn’t aim to educate the masses
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But he shocked the world when he published
“What is Art” which criticized Shakespeare, Beethoven, and even his very own works
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⇒ Socio-religious, in a way where it’s concerned with the moral value of the emotions and
experiences transmitted by means of art
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On the other hand, emotions that have no morality behind them do not push you to become a
better person
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In this light, we cease to consider art as a means to pleasure and we start to view it as a means to
learn & improve the conditions of human life ( didactic aspect of art )
⇒ art is one of the means of establishing connections between man & man
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➔ Art is a human activity consisting in that one man consciously hands on to others feelings
he has lived through, and that other people are infected by those feelings and also
experience them
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➔ Art is not a means of manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God, it’s not a
game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of
man’s emotions, and it is not pleasure
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➔ A writer has to have gone through experiences to write about, which makes the reader
receive those true emotions and feel as though they were his own
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⇒ Shakespeare’s works were criticized on this basis, as his works of art didn’t evoke the feeling of
spiritual union between the author & readership
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It tells the story of a forty-five year old lawyer who is
self-interested, opportunistic, and busy with mundane affairs
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Now, as he confronts his mortality, he wonders what his life has meant, whether
he has made the right choices, and what will become of him
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The novel begins a few moments after Ivan’s death, as family members and acquaintances have
gathered to mark his passing
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For them death is something objective which is not happening to
them
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“Well isn’t that something—he’s dead, but I’m not, was what each of them thought or felt
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The novel then takes us back thirty years to the prime of
Ivan’s life
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Along the way he expels all
personal emotions from his life, doing his work objectively and coldly
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Jealous and obsessed with social
status, he is happy to get a job in the city where he buys and decorates a large house
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He
becomes bad-tempered and bitter, refusing to come to terms with his own death
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Only Gerasim shows sympathy for Ivan’s torment—offering him kindness and honesty—while his
family thinks that Ivan is a bitter old man
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He wonders
whether he has done the right thing, and comprehends that by living as others expected him to, he
may not have lived as he should
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He cannot escape the belief that the kind
of man he became was not the kind of man he should have been
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Gradually he becomes more content and begins to feel sorry for those around him, realizing that they
are too involved in the life he is leaving to understand that it is artificial and ephemeral
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On his deathbed:

❖ “ It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered
good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had
immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false
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If, when we approach the end of our
lives, we find that they were not meaningful—there will be nothing we can do to rectify the situation
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It was as if Kierkegaard had Ilyich in mind when he said:
“This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness …
they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows
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”
Now consider an even more chilling question
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Moral — Confronting the reality of death forces us to reflect on the meaning of life
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He spent all his life focusing
only on one side of his life, which was the materialistic one, and therefore ignored the important
values and principles that allow for one to give meaning to one’s life
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”
❖ “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: there are damasks,
dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes -- all the things people of a certain class
have in order to resemble other people of that class
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”

Ivan was a competitive and gloomy person who didn’t enjoy life
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Rather than relying on his own
reason and good sense to direct his moral life, Ivan blindly adopts the beliefs and values of
aristocratic society
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He believes that if he
only imitates their conduct and lifestyle, if he only runs in the prescribed tracks of high society, his
own life will progress according to plan and he will find meaning and fulfillment
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He begins to act
as one in his position should act
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He buys a house in the city and furnishes it with sophisticated ornaments because
a cultured aristocrat should have a material status symbol
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He fences himself off from every discomforting influence
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When married life becomes difficult, Ivan
adopts a formal, contractual attitude toward his family
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As Ivan scrambles to avoid the
unpleasant, he reduces his personal relationships to shallow, self-preserving simulations
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And instead of meaning and
fulfillment, Ivan finds only pain and dissatisfaction
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He is a representative figure in a broader moral
scheme
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⇒ Just as Ivan's demise makes him conscious of the errors of his life, so too, it conveys the message to the
reader that a life devoid of compassion and empathetic human connection will lead to a similar
unfulfilling end
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By forcing Ivan to confront the prospect of
his death, it brings him face to face with his own isolation
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And as Ivan begins to examine his life, as he questions his existence
and the rationale behind his suffering, he slowly begins to see that his life was not as it should have
been
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At the climactic moment of the novel, when
Ivan passes into the presence of the light and realizes that compassion and love are the true life
values by which to live, the incalculable joy that he experiences is proof of the quality of such a life
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We will notice that the language Tolstoy uses to describe Ilych’s ideal life—words like “pleasant,”
“agreeable,” “free and easy”— has a rather trivial tone to it
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But in this contented mediocrity, is he any
different from anybody else in his world (or ours)? The story insists that he is not
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⇒ This is because he led a shallow and materialistic life deprived of moral/spiritual values
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His relationship was built on the wrong basis “in the eyes of society, that’s the kind of woman he
should marry” there was no room for love or affection, all he did was in an attempt to please others
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They were never aware of each other’s presence or emotions
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➢ Therefore his life being simple refers to him being a simple minded person
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He led a life
according to the norms and values of society instead of a life he truly desired
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She is pretty hypocritical and lacks empathy
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While feigning sympathy
and concern for Ivan during his illness, her real attitude is one of hostility and impatience for his
death
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❖ Lisa
Ivan Ilyich's careless daughter, she resembles her mother
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She is young and
strong and in love, as well as selfish and uncompassionate

❖ Vasya
Ivan Ilyich's son
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He is sincerely moved by his father’s sufferings, and he is the one who gives his father peace
and not the priest who blessed him
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He charmingly eludes duties and entices Pyotr Ivanovich to play cards
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His presence helps distract Pyotr
from thinking deeply about mortality and he lures the man away with the promise of a game of cards
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The mere sight of that playful, well-groomed,
and elegant figure refreshed Pyotr Ivanovich
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”

❖ Gerasim
The most important character in the novella
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In the desert of falseness and fakery that is Ivan Ilych's world, Gerasim
is the lone oasis of genuine honesty and kindness
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Unlike the other characters in the novel,
Gerasim interacts with people in an authentic and reflective way
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⇒ It is not surprising that Gerasim is the only character capable of confronting death with
serenity and courage
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Given the task of
helping Ivan with his excretions and comforting him at night, Gerasim sees his duties as aid to a
dying man
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When he supports Ivan's legs,
Gerasim bridges the gap, both physically and spiritually, between Ivan and the world
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Gerasim is a truly spiritual character
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The fact that Gerasim is a poor peasant is also revealing of Tolstoy's larger plan
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Knick-knacks and decorous
ornaments impede human contact, and aspirations to social prestige depersonalize human interaction
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Gerasim is at peace with himself, and
the mutually comforting relationships he has established not only add immeasurable joy to life, they
also give him the courage and strength to confront death
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Tolstoy's contemplation of death precipitated his
intellectual crisis
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Death was only taken seriously towards the end of the novel
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As real as death is, characters in The Death of Iván Ilych do their best to avoid thinking about it,
including Ivan himself
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Although he was clearly doomed to death after weeks of constant
suffering, he was still clinging to life and denying the possibility of death
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At the bottom of his heart
Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying; but so far from growing used to the idea, he simply did
not grasp it - he was utterly unable to grasp it”

★ “What tormented Ivan Ilyich most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all
accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and that he only needed to keep quiet and
undergo a treatment and then something very good would result
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Despite the fact that they were at the funeral, they still insisted on the idea that death won’t happen
to them one day
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★ “So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilyich's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in
that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves or
their acquaintances
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’

Lisa also denied death by being impatient with his illness for it interfered with her happiness, she
showed up in full dress with her fiancé
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★ “Their daughter came in in full evening dress, her fresh young flesh exposed (making a show
of that very flesh which in his own case caused so much suffering), strong, healthy, evidently
in love, and impatient with illness, suffering, and death, because they interfered with her
happiness
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Maintaining that false belief in the face of such strong evidence and imprisoning oneself
within the delusional world of decorousness and being comme il faut in which death does not
exist in in fact just Tolstoy’s way of showing us that this denial of death is natural to every
human, that we all enslave ourselves to the false idea that death will not apply to us
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In an effort to maintain their life’s focus on pleasantness, they must necessarily distance
themselves from the ultimate unpleasantness: death

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