Ivan Ilyich Death essay
In the Novel of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, There is a man named Ivan who has died recently and two of his friends find out via newspaper. Before he died, the protagonist Ivan Ilyich was a simple person with no unique qualities. He is friendly and is friends with everyone he meets. The main problem he has is his fear of death and how he thinks that no one in his family cares and that they just ignore the fact that he is dying. He was also trying to become a well-known person in the community. But throughout the course of the novel and with the help of his son and his servant, his perspective on life changes. It then switches to show some of his childhood life and his late life. His perspective towards death changes a lot throughout the novel. It goes from him being sad and panicking because he is scared, to him realizing that he lived a good life and that his child and Servant Gerasim love him. Unlike his other family members who ignore the fact that he is dying, which makes him sad. He is also sad that all his hard work will be lost because of his death which was a main cause for his panicking.
It talks little bit about his early life in which he had a normal childhood.
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Only his servant Gerasim and Son love him. His servant has the task of helping him out with his fear and pain until he dies. He also does this because he is a loyal servant who loves his master. Gerasim also begins to spend entire nights with him to keep him comfortable. Before he died he realized that he now didn’t feel anything and that this was it, and that he couldn’t avoid death. Ivan suffered for 3 days. On the third day, two hours before his death. His schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bed. Ivan who was still screaming desperately felt his hand fall on the boy's head, and felt that he caught it and started to cry. Just then he felt love again from his
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
PI never quite makes the transition to the true understanding of the nature of life that Ivan had made and Gerasim as well. Even though upon leaving Ivan’s funeral PI evokes the observation that it is God’s will that everybody dies someday. His receptivity and consciousness make him stand out amongst society. If one looks at PI’s last name of Ivan...
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
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...
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
One of the things that affected Ivan’s death was the feeling of lioness because none of his family members cared about him. He became hopeless and stopped fighting the illness he had. Why and how he died isn’t clearly given in the story, but from one’s assumption, he might have had cancer.
According to Kubler-Ross’s theory, the first cycle is denial. Denial in this case is the individual denying that they are dying. When the individual resists the reality that they are going to die. “Then where shall I be when I am no more? Could this be dying? No I don’t want to!” (Tolystoy, “TdofII” p127), Ivan may have felt that he would be leaving too much behind if he were to die: worrying about where he’ll after he dies and refusing to something that cannot be stopped. Concerned mostly about losing his luxuries, he was clearly afraid and couldn’t accept he was dying as shown in this quote. “In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.” (Tolystoy, “TdofII” p129).
What exactly is dysfunctional? Who wrote the rules to proper family or societal behavior? How does one know exactly what the proper reaction is? Every family has its crazy members and every city it’s insane citizens, but many do a great job of covering it up. Especially when it comes to high in social standing. Many are very careful not to air their dirty laundry in public. There are times when it can get out of hand and the unthinkable may happen. Is it right for one person to automatically appoint themselves as head of the household such as, Orgon in Tartuffe? What about Ivan Ilyich? Would he have been considered the head of the house, because he allowed his wife’s attitude to predict the family’s social standing? These two stories are classic of situational irony not only from families, but in human nature. To analyze Tartuffe and The Death of Ivan Ilyich and then compare them, one must have an open mind to all sorts of behavior and believe that these situations are indeed a reality.
Though illness stripped both Morrie Schwartz and Ivan Ilych of their hope for survival, their dissimilar lifestyles led each to a much different end. Morrie found himself in an overflow of compassion while surrounded by family, friends and colleagues. Ivan, on the other hand, found only the obligatory company of his wife and the painful awareness that no one really cared. Both characters ended their lives the way they lived them, as Ivan acknowledges: "In them he saw himself" (Ivn, 149). While Morrie poured himself into every moment of life and every relationship he pursued, Ivan skirted the dangers of emotion to live "easily, pleasantly, and decorously" (Ivn, 115). In the spirit of such an opposition, the two stories become somewhat like responses to each other. Morrie Schwatrz, proclaimed...
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
The story of In "The Death of Ivan Ilych", was written by Leo Tolstoy around who examines the life of a man, Ivan Ilyich, who would seem to have lived an exemplary life with moderate wealth, high station, and family. By story's end, however, Ivan's life will be shown to be devoid of passion -- a life of duties, responsibilities, respect, work, and cold objectivity to everything and everyone around Ivan. It is not until Ivan is on his death bed in his final moments that he realizes that materialism had brought to his life only envy, possessiveness, and non-generosity and that the personal relationships we forge are more important than who we are or what we own.
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, employers, etc.). While Ivan believes his life has run easily, pleasantly, and decorously like it should, we see that in reality it is an unfulfilled life. Ivan's closest associates are more worried about who will be next in line for promotion now that he is gone, and at his funeral they are more concerned over a bridge game than grieving for the loss of a friend, "The more intimate of Ivan Ilyich's acquaintances, his so-called friends, could not help thinking also that they would now have to fulfill the very tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and paying a visit of condolence to the widow" (Tolstoy Ch. 1).