Ivan Illych

Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich in the later years of his life, and it reflects his increasing fear of and preoccupation with death. The story communicates the realistic experience of the spiritual conversion of a judge, an ordinary, unthinking man, in the face of the terrible fear of his approaching death. It is the exposition of the degrading terror with which an average man approaches his own end and his failure to find justification for his life. Part of the Realism of the story is the way it dwells, with unsparing detail, on the physical horrors of disease and death. The story also presents Ivan’s attempts to deny, evade, and postpone the inevitable horror.

Why does this story begin at the end, with his funeral? We are given a look at his society, a criteria for which to judge Ivan’s life. The mourners’ self-interest, the routine and the unfelt condolences, the forms rather than feelings, all build a sympathy for Ivan that we might not have had if we had know him before he died. He would have reacted the same way that these people did, if they had died instead of him. His wife’s obituary was much like their marriage: cold, unfeeling, and business l

Also beginning with the funeral and then, by way of flashback, telling Ivan’s story allows the story to build to the climax of Ivan’s conversion at the end.

His accident happens when fortune (as he sees it) is smiling on him. He is doing well professionally, socially, and financially. His illness comes from fixing a drape, his desire to arrange the things he owns perfectly. However, his pain is a positive force in his spiritual development. It returns him to his childhood memories. It returns him to his forgotten, personal, individual life. It returns him to God. He returns to his childhood physically as well. He has to be cared for like a baby. He is helpless. The doctor and his wife scold him as if he were a child.

Gerasim is Ivan’s only happiness as he nears the end of his life. To Gerasim, death and suffering are part of mortal existence; goodness consists of treating them as unexceptional. Gerasim tells Peter, “It’s God’s will. We shall all come to it some day” (page 1215). Death is part of living. He has accepted death. He lives a feeling, caring life which he has truly enjoyed but will be prepared to give up. He is close to nature and very “down to earth.” He finds his happiness in people and activity not in things. “Displaying his teeth -- the even, white teeth of a healthy peasant -- and, like a man in the thick of urgent work, he briskly opened the front door, called the coachman, helped Peter Ivanovich into the sledge, and sprang back to the porch as if in readiness for what he had to do next” (page 1189).

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