The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Introduction

In one sense, Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich is very much a “Russian Novel” in the Realist tradition. The work contains characters that are animated in rigorous detail, characters that seems to exist independently of circumstances the author suggests, characters that simply feel real. Unlike many Realist novels, however,The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a work of outstanding brevity, clocking in at well under 100 pages in most editions. Tolstoy's potent cocktail of depth and brevity serves to clearly convey themes - truths about the human condition - through the power of narrative.

Summary and Significance

The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of a man, his climb to success and his mortal sickness. The novel examines Ivan Ilyich's hopes and aspirations, his joys and discontents and the internal struggle surrounding his ultimate demise. In this manner, Tolstoy's work provides the ultimate vehicle for the examination of the human condition, the nature of the “good life,” and the quest for purpose; readers witness the life of a normal man, and then his evaluation of that life in light of impending mortality.

Chapter 1: The Heart of the Matter

The novel does not begin -- as one might imagine , given the premise - with the birth of the protagonist, Ivan Ilyich. Instead, within a few lines, readers are greeted with the chilling words “Ivan Ilyich is dead,” (pp. 31). The words are uttered in the context of a discussion by a group of men at the local court of law. As the men discuss Ilyich's death, they are remarkably cavalier -- surprising, considering that “Ivan Ilyich had been a colleague of the men assembled here and they had all been fond of him,” (pp. 32).

Pyotr Ivanovich, for instance, is immediately concerned with how the death will affect his family relations. “I must put in a request to have my brother-in-law transferred from Kaluga,” he muses, “My wife will be very happy. Now she won't be able to say I never do anything for her family,” (pp. 32). Schwartz, another friend, is primarily concerned with getting in his regular card game, despite the inconveniences of a funeral and visitation. Even Praskovya Fyodorovna, Ilyich's widow, is primarily concerned with the effect that his sickness and death has had upon her own welfare.

Tolstoy has not yet embarked upon that cautionary tale that is Ivan Ilyich's life, and yet we see - in the selfish conduct of the survivors - that its warning has fallen upon deaf ears. Only Pyotr Ivanovich is able, even for a second, to shake practical entanglements and contemplate something of eternal significance. Tolstoy writes that “[d]espite a distasteful awareness of his own hypocrisy... Pyotr Ivanovich was overcome with horror as he thought of the suffering of someone he has known so well, first as a carefree boy, then as a schoolmate, later as a grown man...a fear for himself took possession of him,” (pp. 39). This notion - the idea of putting away the immediate and dominating concern for one's career and social ...