Ivan Ilyich’s life and death are measured against the running backdrop of time in The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Near the beginning of the novella, we see time measured loosely: we meet Ivan Ilyich’s acquaintances and learn about their preoccupations with his death (how it will affect their positions), and then we read about Ivan Ilyich’s life, beginning in childhood. A clock is briefly mentioned as Ivan Ilyich’s acquaintance Peter Ivanovich visits the widow at his house: “In the dining-room where the clock stood that Ivan Ilyich had liked so much and had bought at an antique shop.” This is a precursor to Ivan Ilyich’s later realization that his goals of attaining position and possessions have not resulted in a worthwhile life. As Ivan Ilyich lies dying, Tolstoy writes,

And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed—none of them except the first recollections of childhood.

As the story of his life progresses, the focus on time becomes greater: it is measured increasingly in weeks, days, hours, minutes. (“One month passed and then another.” “An hour and another pass like that.”) After his family has left for the theater and Ivan Ilyich is lying in pain, Tolstoy writes,

When they had gone it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt better; the falsity had gone with them. But the pain remained—that same pain and that same fear that made everything monotonously alike; nothing harder and nothing easier. Everything was worse.

As the end of his life draws near, he dwells on how long his pain lasts:

Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour...and the inevitable end of it all became more and more terrible.

The agony increases, and so does his attention to time:

Till about three in the morning he was in a state of stupefied misery....

At half-past eleven the celebrated specialist arrived.

And then, in his final moments, time becomes an instant:

In place of death there was light.

“So that’s what it is!” he suddenly exclaimed aloud. “What joy!”

To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that instant did not change.