Author: Leo Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich. People visited Tolstoy in his older years and said they were very uncomfortable when he could understand their inner thoughts. He was known for being extremely smart and struggled with human limitations. Some people say he represented human life, but almost all said he was one of the greatest writers of all time and people looked to him for life’s meaning.
Structure/Plot: The Death of Ivan Illych has a very important message. The book starts out of order, starting with a funeral and a flashback to the rest of the story. The book shows the reader that being fake only makes people sad and being true will lead you to a good life. It teaches the meaning of life. Readers are shown mortality.
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Point of view: Point of View 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich is narrated in third-person illustrating Ivan’s life story. All his life events are spoken in the same voice.
Character: Ivan Ilych Golovin is the protagonist of the novel. Ivan is an unimportant man. He likes rich people and tries to copy them. Ivan loves formal relationships. In his work, he always gets rid of personal feelings. Gerasim is the nurse and the butler’s assistant. Peter Ivanovich is Ivan’s best friend. He looks at relationships as a means to an end. However, he is more accepting of the truth than anyone else in the book.
Setting: Most of the narrative is spent in St. Petersburg in the 1880s. The book goes back 30 years and talks about Ivan’s life.
Tone/Diction: The Death of Ivan Ilyich looks at death as the end of all meaning. Death is meaningless and it takes Ivan away from being happy. It’s viewed as a sad experience.
Imagery: 'Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter' 'The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter’s logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all.'
'Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, despair, and always the same. When alone he had a dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others present it would be still worse.'
Symbolism: In The Death of Ivan Ilych there is lots of life and death symbolism. Ivan Ilych was very successful. He wanted to meet his goals and make money. He got married and had two kids, making him fulfilled.
Figurative Language: Tolstoy uses reversal in the story. The actual depth of Ivan happens in the beginning when chronologically it would be at the end. The rest of the book is about his life. During Ivan’s childhood he looks like he is flourishing when in reality, he is dying inside. When Ivan is in his study and is sick, he is really being 'reborn spiritually. He was more worried about how people saw him than who he was on the inside.
Irony: Tolstoy thought that doctors treat people inhumanly, and didn’t like how medicine was 'taking the place of religion.' He viewed medicine as a weakness or not being able to accept death. Ivan embodies what Tolstoy hated, even in his home. Ivan lives in a middle-class apartment. As the narrator says, it 'was so like the others that it would never have been noticed,' but to Ivan 'it seemed to be quite exceptional.' The house is a metaphor for Ivan’s life, with the cramped feeling, its fakeness, its concern only with appearance, and its lack of ability to make someone truly happy.
Theme: The Inevitability of Death. The story of Ivan’s journey to death is also Ivan accepting it. Throughout the book, Tolstoy makes it clear that getting ready for death starts with a good attitude during life. As Ivan’s attitude toward life changes his emotions progress from fear to joy. The avoidance of death that characterizes leads only to sadness. Accepting death lets you feel happy and calm approaching it. The book places a heavy emphasis on living the right life. The sad and fake life consists of ego and greed. It’s meaningless. Real-life, however, has compassion and happiness. Other people are valued. Human relationships are the key to everything.
Title: The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of Ivan’s ordinary life leading up to his death.
Memorable Quotes:
- 'Ivan’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.' The words simple and ordinary talk about how he wants to be in a high social class. His life is 'terrible' because it is not his. It is fake because everything is based on worldly desires and riches
- 'The marriage was considered the right thing by the most highly placed of his associates.' Ivan Ilych marries because that is considered the right, or proper, thing to do among the upper class he wishes to be part of. He clearly does not marry for love, but for propriety, in order to conform to others’ notions of how life should be lived.
- 'It seemed ridiculous that in such circumstances he should be pleased to make a grand slam.' Ivan Ilych is quite ill and often in great pain. Because he can no longer tolerate his wife’s presence, he pursues his old pleasures. Here, Ivan is playing bridge with some of his acquaintances. During the game, he deliberately sabotages a 'grand slam' that would win the game. He does that because he suddenly realizes how trivial winning a card game is for a man who is so sick and who is likely dying. This is one of Ivan Ilych’s first rebellions against the customs and properties of upper-class life that had so far ruled his.
- 'There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I’m going there! Where?' Ivan Ilych is thinking about his life, how it once seemed filled with light or at least the proper pastimes deemed acceptable by his cohorts. Now, however, he is dying, and he feels surrounded by darkness. He is still here in life, but he knows he’s going there. He wonders what death is like and where the dead will go.
- 'We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?' Gerasim is of the peasant class by birth, a simple man who has a deep understanding and acceptance of death as a part of life. He is glad to help the increasingly helpless Ivan Ilych as his illness progresses. Gerasim willingly assists with the most intimate functions of his body. For Gerasim, who is at ease with the body and with its inevitable demise, it’s not 'trouble' to help a dying man. Gerasim accepts that everyone dies, so being with Ivan Ilych as he faces death is no hardship and not improper for him.
Literary Criticism: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych represented when Ivan started to wonder if he had lived his life right. It was also when he accepted religion. It’s a story of a dying man who is suffering. His book is a great example of the conflict of miracles and medicine, science and religion. It paints a picture of a 19th-century character. Tolstoy leaves the 21st-century medical community with a template of the physical and mental suffering of dying people, as shown in this interesting novel.
Relationships: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, although fictional, was representative of a time in his life when he questioned what a good life was and whether he had lived well. It was also a time when he accepted religion.
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