I am not the possessor of such talents, but Banville has both. And so did Tolstoy. View all 75 comments. Socrates said that an unexamined life was not worth living. In Kafka's The Metamorphosis poor Gregor Samsa is transformed into a being that cannot take part in the daily round of society and becomes more and more sidelined and ignored by those around him.
This book, the Death of Ivan Ilych, has both of these notions contained within it's theme. Ivan Ilyich is dying. As he grows sicker and fits in less with his fairweather friends and family and their preoccupations with their social lives, they l Socrates said that an unexamined life was not worth living. As he grows sicker and fits in less with his fairweather friends and family and their preoccupations with their social lives, they leave him be, they cannot stand his sickness, they cannot stand him.
All Ivan Ilyich has is the simple, unschooled manservant with the good heart who doesn't want his master to die alone and afraid. He is almost the Angel of Mercy, all good, his role is just to be there to help his master pass from this life with a good companion. Ivan Ilych progresses through the endless scream of 'Why me? And then he sees his rather petty life of moderate success and a little excess as it really was He stops hating his selfish wife and self-centred daughter and ceasing to be afraid of death hopes his demise will bring them peace.
And by this examination of his life and the letting go of his more shabby and trivial emotions, he elevates himself. Finished end of Dec. View all 11 comments. View all 23 comments. Last year the group catching up on classics chose The Death of Ivan Ilyich as one of their monthly short story selections. At the time, I did not have the time to read it; however, a play I recently read had reading Anna Karenina as a major plot line. Wanting an introduction to Tolstoy prior to reading this epic, I decided upon Ivan Ilyich as my gateway to his more celebrated work. Ivan Ilyich enjoyed an upper middle class life in pre revolutionary Russia.
He graduated from a jurisprudence cours Last year the group catching up on classics chose The Death of Ivan Ilyich as one of their monthly short story selections. He graduated from a jurisprudence course and eventually became a lawyer in an out of the way province. He married Praskovya Fyodorovna and the two lived a married life that was neither happy nor sad for over twenty years.
Each person became set in their own ways and the two lived as separate islands in their home, made possible by Ivan Ilyich's income. I was not completely captivated by the story of Ivan Ilyich. He lived a relatively normal existence and experienced many things that an average upper middle class citizen might have experienced in Russia at the time of publication, hence the rating. I found Tolstoy's writing style accessible, which should ease the way for me to read his longer works. The part I found the most interesting was how Tolstoy through Ivan Ilyich discussed his views on death and dying, which is the premise of this story.
Ivan Ilyich grappled with the alternatives of dying and being mired in a marriage where he was not appreciated or loved.
Even though I only gave this story three stars, I am glad I read it as an introduction to Tolstoy. The premise is an interesting one and I enjoy the time period, although, it is not a story that I am not drawn to. I would recommend this to those who might not read classics due to their long length and want to begin to read an author's works. I look forward to endeavoring through Tolstoy's epic novels after discovering that his writing style is easy to read for the masses. View all 10 comments. Dec 10, Councillor rated it it was amazing Shelves: It is a widespread stereotype that Russian classics are mostly long, tedious, boring, a burden to get through, but one only needs to read a short book like The Death of Ivan Ilych in order to be proven wrong.
A philosophical, in its beautiful writing almost lyrical account of a dying man's life, Tolstoy will make you think about your own mortality, about happiness, sorrow and most likely your own life as well. With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he must go to bed, often to lie awake the greater part of the night. Next morning he had to get up again, dress, go to the law courts, speak, and write; or if he did not go out, spend at home those twenty-four hours a day each of which was a torture.
And he had to live thus all alone on the brink of an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him. Tolstoy uses his protagonist to help us realize how we all have to die one day, and there will surely be readers who, just like Ivan Ilych, always thought of death as something foreign they wouldn't have to worry about until a long time later. The author's prose is highly readable and might just as well have originated from someone who wrote the book five or ten years ago; besides, Tolstoy knows how to captivate his reader, thus The Death of Ivan Ilych can only be called a book which can't be recommended highly enough for readers interested in Russian literature or, on a more general note, classics.
These were islets at which they anchored for a while and then again set out upon that ocean of veiled hostility which showed itself in their aloofness from one another. The sadness behind the realizations of those two characters that their marriage has never been destined to bring happiness into their lives will cloud their sorrowful lives, until the slow, but torturous demise of Ivan Ilych turns into the ultimate factor driving them apart from each other.
If you are intimidated by the length of classics like Anna Karenina , War and Peace , Crime and Punishment and the like, then I can almost assure you that reading some shorter novellas like The Death of Ivan Ilych or Dostoyevksy's White Nights will help you with finding a way into Russian literature, coming to terms with the rather uncommon names and growing an interest in the huge Russian classics which will surpass the simple feeling of pressure to read them just because others said those are books everyone has to read.
And they probably are. But it's always easier to anticipate rather than dread them, so novellas like these will be extremely helpful. View all 31 comments. Nov 22, Fabian rated it it was amazing Shelves: Sadly, nowadays I am way more bubbly and optimistic than ever, so I had a healthy distance between "Ivan Ilych's life had been most ordinary and therefore most terrible Sadly, nowadays I am way more bubbly and optimistic than ever, so I had a healthy distance between my idle thoughts and this powerful piece.
The novella is incredibly vivid, simple Yes, it seems that an illness so long gives the titular man the right to sum up quickly his days of before, his heights, his passions Inexorablemente avanza y nos abraza. View all 3 comments. Usually classed among the best examples of the novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of a high-court judge and his sufferings and death from a terminal illness in 19th-ce Usually classed among the best examples of the novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of a high-court judge and his sufferings and death from a terminal illness in 19th-century Russia.
Ivan Ilyich Ilyich is a patronymic, his surname is Golovin is a highly regarded official of the Court of Justice, described by Tolstoy as, "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. She is characterized as self-absorbed and uninterested in her husband's struggles, unless they directly affect her.
Gerasim is the Golovins' young butler. He takes on the role of sole comforter and caretaker during Ivan's illness. Peter Ivanovich is Ivan's longtime friend and colleague. He studied law with Ivan and is the first to recognize Ivan's impending death. Lisa Golovin is Ivan's daughter. View all 8 comments. Jan 30, Bruce rated it really liked it. As a college student I read it as a description of an experience for someone elderly, an experience distant, almost unreal, so far in the future as to be strange, almost surreal.
Now, a retired physician in my seventh decade, I find that I view it differently, surprised that Ivan is only in his forties when he dies I was astounded to note that he was so young! Apr 03, J. Sutton rated it really liked it.
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He reviews his career, family and the passions which guided his life, all the decisions which led him to where he found himself. Even as he knows death is closing in on him, Ilych rejects the possibility that he will die, and only slowly comes to accept his fate.
I remember reading this many years ago and it had stuck with me. The story Ilych tells himself was ful In Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych, awareness of his impending death compels Ilych to think about whether his life had meaning.
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The story Ilych tells himself was fuller than I had remembered. The topic and the structure of the narrative makes this memorable; however, it is the meditative quality which Tolstoy brings to Ilych's last days which makes this story especially powerful. Jul 15, Foad rated it it was amazing Shelves: View all 13 comments.
Jan 21, Duane rated it really liked it Shelves: If you are bothered by your own mortality then consider yourself forewarned. It's not just the thought of dying much too young, just when you have gained a level of accomplishment, but also to die in agony, slowly. I've seen it much to close in my life, and to read such a vivid account was difficult. The power of writing, of good writing, can take you many places, even places you don't want to go. Ivan begins to question whether he has, in fact, lived a good life.
In the final days of his life, Ivan makes a clear split between an artificial life, such as his own, which masks the true meaning of life and makes one fear death, and an authentic life, the life of Gerasim. Authentic life is marked by compassion and sympathy, the artificial life by self-interest. Then "some force" strikes Ivan in the chest and side, and he is brought into the presence of a bright light.
SparkNotes: The Death of Ivan Ilych: Plot Overview
His hand falls onto his nearby son's head, and Ivan pities his son. He no longer hates his daughter or wife, but rather feels pity for them, and hopes his death will release them. In so doing, his terror of death leaves him, and as Tolstoy suggests, death itself disappears. In , philosopher Merold Westphal said that the story depicts "death as an enemy which 1 leads us to deceive ourselves, 2 robs us of the meaning of life, and 3 puts us in solitary confinement. Tolstoy's book is about many things: But more than anything, I would offer, it is about the consequences of living without meaning, that is, without a true and abiding connection to one's life Indeed, the mundane portrayal of Ivan's life coupled with the dramatization of his long and grueling battle with death seems to directly reflect Tolstoy's theories about moral living , which he largely derived during his sabbatical from personal and professional duties in In his lectures on Russian literature , Russian-born novelist and critic Vladimir Nabokov argues that, for Tolstoy, a sinful life such as Ivan's is moral death.
Therefore, death, the return of the soul to God, is, for Tolstoy, moral life. Ivan lived a bad life and since the bad life is nothing but the death of the soul, then Ivan lived a living death; and since beyond death is God's living light, then Ivan died into a new life — Life with a capital L.
Death permeates the narrative in a realistic and absorbing fashion, but the actual physicality of death is only present in the early chapters during Ivan's wake. Instead, the story leads the reader through a pensive, metaphysical exploration of the reason for death and what it means to truly live.
Tolstoy was a man who struggled greatly with self-doubt and spiritual reflection, especially as he grew close to his own death in No matter how often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long.
The Death of Ivan Ilych
The Death of Ivan Ilych was the first significant work of literature Tolstoy produced after his conversion. It's a forceful confrontation with the problem of death, and through death, the meaning of life. It's also a sharp satire of the "false" modern middle-class lifestyle embodied in the character of Ivan Ilych. Tolstoy saw this lifestyle and attitude taking shape in his day, and thought that those who embraced it were incapable of facing death because they did not understand life. Some readers admire the novella for its powerful moral message. Others say it shows the beginning of Tolstoy's loss of his art, and that once he became interested in teaching moral lessons, his writing lost its complexity and became one-dimensional.
What do you think? Get back to us after you've read The Death of Ivan Ilych. Tolstoy 's message in The Death of Ivan Ilych isn't exactly subtle: Even if we don't have a freak drapery accident and wind up with a drawn-out illness like Ivan Ilych, we're still faced with death.
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Death is just easier to forget about when everything seems pleasant. That's why Ivan doesn't think about it. But it doesn't matter: And when Ivan becomes ill, he finds that he isn't able to enjoy many, or any, of the things he once did.