Leo Tolstoy uses Gerasim in “The Death of Ivan Ilych” as a tool to demonstrate Ivan’s inability to grasp the concept of death. Although Ivan is physically alive throughout the story he does not become mentally and spiritually alive until the final moments of his life. Gerasim is used to reveal the importance of human interaction and compassion and the role it plays in permitting an individual to live a truly satisfying life.
Despite Ivan’s family living in a fairly high society, Gerasim, Ivan's butler, reflects on the true way of living. He spends time with Ivan as he crumbles and torments himself due to his illness. Contrasting society, “Gerasim alone did not lie; everything showed that he alone understood the facts of the case and did not consider it necessary to disguise them, but simply felt sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled master” (42). Tolstoy compares the falsity of others with Gerasim’s sympathy to unveil the insignificance of the upper class: “Stop lying! You know and I know that I am dying. Then at least stop lying about it!” (41). Despite not having anything, only Gerasim lives the correct way appreciating others. Remarkably, Ivan is wealthy and lives up to high society standards; hence, he doesn't truly live, instead oblivious to reality. While his loved ones evade the concept of mortality, “it is he who is dead and not I” (4), Gerasim grasps it, “expressing the fact that he did not think his work burdensome, because he was doing it for a dying man and hoped someone would do the same for him when his time came” (42), and can essentially live. Realizing that life does not keep going, Gerasim seizes each day as another chance and is not afraid to live.
Living on to crumble, Ivan realizes that his life is insignifica...
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...f contentment and the ability to understand one another.
Ivan did not closely co-exist with others, creating a life full of deceit and misery. Gerasim demonstrates that materialistic things do not create happiness. Ivan was at fault for his misery, revealing that he ignored his family in order to live up to the standards of the upper class. While Gerasim’s compassion took over Ivan’s thoughts, he realized that he had lived life incorrectly. In his final hours of life, he touches his son, noticing that he had hurt his family he began to understand why his life was full of regret. Ivan lived miserably because he waited until he was dying to reflect on his actions, he never questioned whether his actions were meaningful and did not recognize that his family and he were living a life full of lies. Gerasim reveals the role of altruism and how it permits one to be happy.
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
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,
Peter Ivanovich (known from now on as PI) was Ivan’s dearest friend. PI and Ivan have known each other all their lives yet at Ivan’s funeral PI shows no deep remorse. All that PI really thinks about is the vacancy that Ivan has left at work. He like other people, thinks that relationships are just about achieving ones own agenda. And such loving and compassionate relationships do not exist. Another situation that PI has is that after his selfish like behavior he is characterized by a desire to avoid the unpleasant. This is shown when PI skirts the topic of Ivan’s death and “drags his feet” when it comes time to attend the funeral. He has a problem with confronting the aspect of his own mortality.
However, through the enlightenment provided by Tolstoy, and the lessons taught, I now see that I am less satisfied with my existence and more deceivingly complacent with it. To expand on this, I have not done anything of true significance and have lived only to appear content, fooling even myself, while hiding behind a stoic facade. I have lived in an inauthentic way, preoccupied with my superficial social portrayal instead of true inner delineation. Just as I did, I feel as though the protagonist, Ivan Ilyich, would have claimed to have been happy, genuinely believing himself. I see a lot of myself in Ivan, and it makes me fearful. I would seek only what was pleasant and shy away from what is unpleasant. I now see I must be willing to accept my own transience and live genuinely if I want to live a blissful
Many upper-middle class people believe that conforming to societal norms is what would determine a person’s happiness. Ivan Ilyich, follows a conventional lifestyle with a steady job. Tolstoy depicts how Ivan conforms to society by using Ivan’s perspective of his work as something “[presenting] on paper only in its externals, completely excluding his personal opinion of the matter.” (Tolstoy, 748). Ivan’s behavior demonstrates how he is not passionate about his work and that he only works because it is acceptable in society. Tolstoy uses satire to reveal Ivan’s character as a man existing to please society. “At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good positions and that they did not
Tolstoy provided us with two perspectives to view Ivan’s life in “The death of Ivan Illyich”: an omniscient narrator and Ivan himself. What I plan to do is give another perspective, not necessarily to view his life, but rather to his experiences after he realized he was dying. This perspective will be an analytical and psychological; the perspective from Kubler-Ross’s Stages of death (or stages of grief, as they are better known for). These stages occur when we are faced with an event that is usually connected with death. The “normal” order in which these five stages occur, though may not go doctrinally in this order, are as such: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.
Tolstoy immediately absorbs you into the novel by beginning with Ivan’s death. The actual death scene is saved until the end of the novel, but he shows you the reaction of some of Ivan’s colleagues as they hear the news of Ivan’s death. You are almost disgusted at the nonchalant manner that Ivan’s “friends” take his death. They are surprised by his death, but immediately think of how his death will affect their own lives, but more importantly, their careers. “The first though that occurred to each of the gentlemen in the office, learning of Ivan Ilyich’s death, was what effect it would have on their own transfers and promotions.” (pg 32) As a reader, you have to wonder how Ivan must have had to live in order for people close to him to feel no sadness towards the loss or even pity for his wife. In fact, these gentlemen are exactly like Ivan. The purpose of their lives was to gain as much power as possible with n...
I think many people have experienced the feelings that Ivan has felt. You just try to manage to get through the day. Everyone wants to believe that they are special and have great fulfilling lives but never do. It is no ones fault but their own, in order to have greatness you must work for it. You have to take risks and if you don't you’ll end up like Ivan Ilych and regret your entire
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
...t is . What really accentuated the story's realness was the cold-harsh fact that no one is exempt from death. This was given when Gerasim said to Ivan that everyone dies (p135). As the last book Tolstoy made before his conversion to Christianity: this book, delving deep into death, could reveal some clues about what the bible is trying to tell us about the truth of death. Is death the end, the process, or...the beginning? Who knows? One thing for certain is that every individual goes through the grief process a bit differently, and Tolstoy has proven that through his main character, Ivan Illych.
Vladek’s controlling ways leads him to invent a life that he never had. Vladek wields his reality by reinventing his past life. When Vladek tells Art about his marriage to Anja, he portrays his marriage like a fairy tale. Vladek says, “We were both very happy, and lived happy, happy ever after” (Spiegelman 2:136). He reinvents his past life after the end of the Holocaust as free of woe. Correspondingly, he loses himself...
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.
It is important that everyone lives their lives according to God’s purpose for them. Many people in today’s society fear death. Those who fear death have little to no knowledge about what God has planned for all of his children. On the other hand, some people fear death because they feel as though they have not fully completed their life’s purpose; or lived accordingly. This work brings about many real-life situations. There will always be people who use others to advance their own lives. Then there will be people who want the best for others. Continuing a study of this work will allow readers to make a connection to his or her current society. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is an easy read, that will automatically catch the reader’s
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).
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