Death of Ivan Illich/ Reflections on death

“Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”(para55) This statement means that because Ivan always did what a man of his position should do everything in his life was there because it was expected of him he got a good job, so he took a wife like a young gentleman ought to, he bought a nice house and furnished it with antiques and other nice furniture because a man should have a symbol of his wealth. Everything he did was expected of him so much that his life was too simple and too ordinary. There is nothing that is really his own in his life, everything he enjoys are things that he is expected to enjoy. As he gets closer to the end of his life he realizes all things he took pleasure in were void of meaning. Such as his bridge games Ivan gets a chance to g

Death brings us closer to what we really want in life. It helps to understand what the way we wished we had lived and that it is not to late to live the right way. Ivan had learned that compassion and sympathy were more important than the life of high society that he had put so much value on.

Ivan finally views his death not as death but as a part of life “In place of death there was light”(para358) He realizes his life was not lived right and that it doesn’t matter that he can correct it now at the end and that he does not have to actually perform the tasks that God knows his intent and that is all that matters. “knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand”(para351) He comes to understand that compassion and sympathy are the things that are most important in life and that these are things he has not lived by but tried to change at the last minutes of his life. He also realizes that he does not need to fear death, that it is indeed a part of life and it will come to everyone.

et a grand slam the greatest hand in all of bridge he botches the execution of the hand but comes to realize what difference would it have made if he did get the grand slam.

At the start of the story Ivan feels no sympathy for others not for his wife when she is ill while pregnant or for the cases he goes through at work. He is disassociated an

Some topics in this essay:
Ivan Ilych, compassion sympathy, sympathy life, compassion sympathy life, grand slam, life realizes, life simple ordinary, life simple, simple ordinary, life lived, closer life, wife ill, ivan ilych,