The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy

 

 

 

 

The Death of Ivan Ilych

by Leo Tolstoy

 

 

 

Short Summary:

 

During an interval in a trial, several legal professionals converse in a private room. Peter Ivánovich, the title character's closest friend, reads in the obituaries that Iván Ilych has died. Iván Ilych had been terminally ill for some time. He was the colleague of the men present. The men immediately think, each to himself, of how Iván Ilych's death may result in promotion for them all. Each man thinks gratefully that Iván Ilych is dead and not he. They also think of how they will be forced to go through all the tedious business of paying respects and visiting the family.

 

Later that day Peter Ivánovich goes to Iván Ilych's house.

 

Iván Ilych's face seems somehow handsomer in death than in life, and is marked by some kind of ｅxpression of satisfaction. The face also seems to bear some kind of warning to the living.

 

Before service, Praskóvya Fëdorovna (Iván Ilych's wife) and Peter Ivánovich have a talk, where she describes her husband's horrible sufferings: the last three days before his death, he screamed continuously. She then asks Peter Ivánovich advice about pensions and governments grants.

 

On his way out, Peter Ivánovich sees Iván Ilych's daughter and her fiancé, as well as Iván Ilych's young son. He attends the services. on the way out he comments to Gerásim, Iván Ilych's sick nurse, about the sadness of the occasion, but the peasant says simply that it's God's will and the fate of all men.

 

Peter Ivánovich still has plenty of time that evening to play bridge.

 

With the preface-aftermath finished, Tolstoy returns to the beginning, moving back in time nearly three decades. "Iván Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." His death at age 45 follows a nondescript career as a member of the court of justice.

 

Beginning in the title character's youth: Iván Ilych is the middle son of a bureaucrat. He attends the School of Law. He is unquestioningly admiring of those in high station, and seeks to imitate them however he can. After law school he qualifies for a position in the civil service.

 

His work takes him to the provinces as an official serving the governor. A second move makes him examining magistrate in his new town, where he makes friends with the local society and takes up cardplaying. He marries Praskóvya Fëdorovna, the best girl in his set.

 

His wife becomes difficult starting with the first pregnancy. Iván Ilych deals with her by devoting himself more fully to work. They settle into an aloof marriage. Iván Ilych continues to cherish propriety, decorous living, and pleasantness, through moves and various promotions and the births and deaths of several children. Years pass: at last, his eldest daughter is sixteen and his one surviving son is a schoolboy.

 

After a career setback, Iván Ilych fights for a post with high salary, and ends up with a job in Petersburg. He throws himself into decorating. one day, when draping hangings, he slips and bumps his side. The pain goes away before long.

 

The family settles into their new life, making friends with the right sort of people, and Iván Ilych does his job adequately. He lives life as he believes life should be lived: "easily, pleasantly, and decorously" (133).

 

A pain in Iván Ilych's left side grows, connected to the fall he had while hanging drapes, and he now has a chronic unpleasant taste in his mouth. He becomes more irritable, and begins seeing doctors, who diagnose his illness as an appendix problem. Gradually, his illness worsens, he loses pleasure in playing cards, and he grows increasingly alienated from those around him. He ends up moving into a separate room, where his mobility decreases.

 

In the third month of his illness, he no longer can control his bodily functions, and a peasant lad named Gerásim is appointed to take care of him. Gerásim is pleasant, and Iván Ilych likes being around him, even though most people nowadays disgust him. Iván Ilych becomes increasingly aware of the hypocrisy and lack of compassion in the people around him, including doctors and his own family. His hatred for these people, especially his wife, increases as his death approaches. only Gerásim and Iván Ilych's son seem to really care for him.

 

The routine of Iván Ilych's life becomes increasingly difficult. He is forced to take opium to fight the pain, and his mental anguish becomes more terrible as he fights the realization that he has wasted his life. He has dreams of a black sack with no bottom, into which he is endlessly being pushed.

 

When the end seems near, at his wife's behest, Iván Ilych takes communion.

 

The last three days of his life, Iván Ilych screams in agony. But on the third day, he has a revelation. As his son touches his hand, Iván Ilych finally recognizes that the way he has lived his life has been hypocritical and empty. He falls through the bottom of his dream's black sack and sees a great light. The light is comforting. He accepts that compassion is the key to correct living, and tries to ask his wife for forgiveness. He feels not hatred for others, but pity. He retreats into his inner world at the end. Though he seems to be in agony, internally Iván Ilych is at peace as he dies.

 

 

About The Death of Ivan Ilych:

 

The Death of Iván Ilych was published in 1886, several years after a period of depression and personal intellectual turmoil (1875-1878) that ended with Tolstoy's conversion to Christianity.

 

Tolstoy's Christianity is well known, but his ideas about faith and God were the complex products of years of tortured meditation through numerous crises of faith. The great crisis preceding his conversion began with Tolstoy's struggle with the inevitability of death, which for Tolstoy seemed to make life meaningless. Tolstoy found something of an answer to his questions among Russia's peasants, whose simple, hard lives were enriched by their faith. Between 1878 and 1882, Tolstoy wrote four works examining the importance of faith and the meaning of life in spiritual terms. Tolstoy's writings on faith create a religion colder and more rational than the simple fervency of peasant belief. His faith is important in much of his later writing, but his Christianity is quite different from the faith of most organized churches, or the faith of the modern American "born-again" movement. In the end, Tolstoy could not accept the simple faith of the Russian peasants he admired. He rejects the importance of miracles. Christ to him is primarily a teacher, rather than the resurrected Son of God.

 

Tolstoy's ethical and aesthetic views strike many as somewhat severe, and his conversion did not seem to improve his treatment of his wife or children. In later writings, Tolstoy attacks Shakespeare, along with several other writers of colossal stature, as an immoral scribbler who stands against religion, the working classes, and human progress.

 

Not surprisingly, The Death of Iván Ilych is a deeply religious work, but religious on its own terms. The protagonist is a somewhat clueless, spiritually empty hero whose long illness forces him to confront the meanings of both death and life. Iván Ilych represents a small but important class of urban bureaucrats, prominent in the day-to-day running of Russian affairs in Tolstoy's days, whose lives became increasingly detached from nature, the land, and spiritual values. By exposing the horrible vacuity of Iván Ilych's life, Tolstoy explores the self-deception, immorality, and alienation of a whole class of individuals. Although Iván Ilych is nowhere near as intelligent as his creator, like Tolstoy he comes to accept death and gain a deep, if painful understanding of what his life has meant. The novel embodies perfectly the kinds of values and purpose Tolstoy thought literature should have.

 

Tolstoy wrote many works of non-fiction, and professed a preference for these explorations of ethics and religion over his novels and short stories. The fiction writer in him, however, was hard to suppress. Tolstoy's late novel, Hadji Murad, was never published during his life; this fact suggests some of the author's ambivalence about the work, but Tolstoy could not resist writing it. Far from the near-didactic nature of his non-fiction, Hadji Murad is a short novel with the breadth and power of an epic, with vivid characterization and intense storytelling that sweep the reader away. While the reader senses the moral concerns of the tale's creator, the short novel is a far cry from the didacticism of Tolstoy's non-fiction. The gap suggests that Tolstoy sometimes had trouble reconciling Tolstoy the artist with Tolstoy the ardent and moralizing Christian. The Death of Iván Ilych is one of the works in which Tolstoy is able to bridge that gap.

 

 

 

Main Themes:

 

Death: The reality of Death is a central theme of the novel. Tolstoy's contemplation of death precipitated his intellectual crisis. The truth of death puts all of life in context, and many of the other themes are seen in Death's shadow.

 

Denial of Death: As real as death is, characters in The Death of Iván Ilych go out of their way to avoid thinking about it. At the funeral, those present try to see death as an odd occurrence, a thing that has happened to the deceased, rather than an end awaiting everyone. To Tolstoy, denial of death is usually linked with an incredibly detached living of life.

 

Detachment from Life: Everywhere in the novel, Tolstoy speaks of Iván Ilych's desire for propriety, decorous living, and pleasantness. This motivation is a poor substitute for involved, richer living. Occupation with petty social concerns and interior decorating are Iván Ilych's way of escaping from the real world around him. Misplaced priorities are the bane of all the characters of the novel except Gerásim, whose simple goodness makes Iván Ilych question his whole life.

 

The Gap Between Inner Reality and Outer Appearance: The gap between inner truth and outer appearance becomes apparent nearly every time two characters speak to each other. Hypocrisy is a way of life for the novel's characters, as nearly every statement is made to hide real motivations and feelings. Worse yet, most are at some level aware of the gap, and choose to ignore it. As Iván Ilych grows more ill, the hypocrisy in the world around him hurts him as much as his sickness. In Gerásim, the gap does not exist, and Iván Ilych is struck powerfully by the peasant boy's example.

 

Redemption: Iván Ilych's final moments are not depressing or painful, but full of hope. As full as the novel's world is of hypocrisy, as devoid as it is of real love, Tolstoy offers an alternative. Compassion and living fully can both be done even when there is no time left, and the protagonist's acceptance of both compassion and mortality means that his death can be a happy one. Sincerity, pity, and compassion are all marks of a good life, and breaking through to them is possible even on one's deathbed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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