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A review by sidharthvardhan
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
4.0
“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible."
How do you define an interesting life? Ivan has seen it all one can normally expect to see in a life – he has loved, he has married, has have children, has seen ups and downs in his professional life – yet the moment death shows its face, he comes to conclusion that his life was futile - everything is so ordinary including the very cause of his death. He comes to wonder at the meaninglessness of everything he has done:
“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”
With each successive chapter, his health declines and death becomes more and more real, initially he is fully focused on saving his life. His family and friends, it seems to him, are not taking his disease with enough attention.
but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.”
In fact, when he stays sick over a long time – he comes to be seen as a disturbance by them, something that is stopping them from getting on with their life. He is so much more disappointed in all this that he comes to see death as welcome relief.
'Death of Ivan Ilych' looks into mind of a dying person and is deceptively brief. If you have ever been around a really sick person and find him really annoying here is a chance to see the terrible loneliness faced by her/him:
And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to understand or pity him”
How do you define an interesting life? Ivan has seen it all one can normally expect to see in a life – he has loved, he has married, has have children, has seen ups and downs in his professional life – yet the moment death shows its face, he comes to conclusion that his life was futile - everything is so ordinary including the very cause of his death. He comes to wonder at the meaninglessness of everything he has done:
“Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?" suddenly came into his head. "But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?”
With each successive chapter, his health declines and death becomes more and more real, initially he is fully focused on saving his life. His family and friends, it seems to him, are not taking his disease with enough attention.
but that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence.”
In fact, when he stays sick over a long time – he comes to be seen as a disturbance by them, something that is stopping them from getting on with their life. He is so much more disappointed in all this that he comes to see death as welcome relief.
'Death of Ivan Ilych' looks into mind of a dying person and is deceptively brief. If you have ever been around a really sick person and find him really annoying here is a chance to see the terrible loneliness faced by her/him:
And he has to live like this on the edge of destruction, alone, with nobody at all to understand or pity him”