for Ivan Ilyich is his servant Gerasim, a young man of rural background. Tolstoy's point, the subtext of Gerasim's difference from the others, is probably that laboring people, because they are not consumed with wealth and possessions, have not lost their spirituality and their awareness of the realities of suffering and death, in the way that middle- and upper-class people, concerned with the material world, have done.

With illness, constant pain and the inevitability of death, Ivan Ilyich's entire world has collapsed. It is not until his final three days when he screams continuously in agony that he becomes aware that the focus of his life has somehow been in error, or that at least, he has missed the main point of existence which, in Tolstoy's moral, is the reality of death and the primacy of the spiritual over the material world.

"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1886) can be compared with "A Christmas Carol" (1843) by Charles Dickens, a writer Tolstoy admired. In the story by Dickens the greedy, selfish Ebenezer Scrooge goes through an ordeal and comes to the realization that he has been leading the wrong kind of life, that the right kind of life is to stop thinking about himself and to start thinking about other people. Ivan Ilyich goes through a much longer ordeal while he is dying, but he comes to the same realization as Scrooge: that selfishness leads to misery, while altruism leads to liberation and peace of mind. Ivan Ilyich is not as miserly as Ebenezer Scrooge, but Tolstoy was more of a realist than Dickens. Ilyich seems like a real person, while Scrooge seems more like a caricature. 

As the title of this poignant story suggests, death is a major preoccupation of this tale and Tolstoy uses it to explore his own feelings of death and how a man can die well and be at peace with himself. If there is a moral to be found in this story, it is to be discovered by considering the treatment of death and the role it plays in the last few days and weeks of the life of Ivan Ilyich. Consider what kind of a man Ivan Ilyich is:

Even when he was at the School of Law he was just what he remained for teh rest of his life: a capable, cheerful, good-natured, and sociable man, though strict in the fulfillment of what he considered to be his duty: and he considered his duty to be what was so considered by those in authority.

He is a man who lives his life trying to meet the expectations of society, and it is this ironically that causes his death, as it is when he is placing the curtains that he falls and initiates his sickness. It is only his sickness that he becomes aware of the superficiality of his situation and life. Death is not something that can be astutely avoided or managed in the way that he has so cleverly managed his family and work. The last three days, marked by Ivan Ilyich's screaming, only end when he is able to confront and accept death in the same way that Gerasim so obviously does, compared to the way that his wife and family avoid referring to "It" and refuse to acknowledge the truth of Ivan Ilyich's inevitable decline. Thus the moral of the story seems to be that we all need to accept death as a necessary part of life and not to ignore it as society dictates. It is only then that we are able to love and lead meaningful lives, and Ivan Ilyich discovers too late when he is finally able to discover the light that is in death and love his wife and son.

I think, in answering this question, it's useful to consider how this story is structured, because The Death of Ivan Ilyich begins at the end, after its protagonist has died, with Ivan Ilyich's funeral. In a way, then, it might be useful to consider the funeral scene itself and how it relates to the larger story that follows.

In the funeral scene, what we see is a focus on appearances. Ilyich's friend Ivanovich (whose viewpoint we initially follow) is largely focused on giving an appropriate impression. You see this in his continued observance of the signing of the cross (which is joined with his internal preoccupation concerning the appropriateness of the gesture) or in his greeting the widow, Praskovya, who is herself primarily interested in maximizing the amount of money she can receive from the State, now that her husband is deceased. In reading this scene, you might get a sense of artificiality on the part of its participants and, ultimately. dishonesty.

From here, we follow Ivan Ilyich, starting in his youth and carrying on until his death, mirroring the funeral scene itself. We find that for much of his life, Ilyich had possessed a single minded focus on appearances. However, as his illness takes root, he comes to realize just how hollow (and ultimately meaningless) his entire life had been, and as his illness worsens, his despair only grows. What we see in Ivan Ilyich is a condemnation of the materialistic lifestyle, which provides no comfort in the presence of death.

The ultimate moral of the story is that life without love is unsatisfying and meaningless. Before his last days, Ivan was driven by material and social success. He married for social and economic reasons, never truly loving his wife. He worked only to get more furniture and goods. However, none of this ever made him happy.

So, when he realizes he is dying, he is distraught, even angry, at this twist of fate. Then he comes to regret that he did not love more. He feels pity for those consumed by egotistical desires that will never satisfy them.

Once Ivan starts thinking about others and loving them, he becomes happier in his final moments than he ever was in his "healthy" days. Even though his body is failing him, his soul has never been more alive. The people around him who have not yet awakened to his great lesson are more to be pitied than he—at least, that's what Tolstoy's text appears to suggest.

The message of The Death of Ivan Ilyich is simple. Ilyich was living the wrong life when he was thinking about his own selfish ego, and he was living the right life when he began thinking about others. His ordeal was a learning experience. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is similar to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Scrooge becomes enlightened and happy when he stops thinking selfishly and begins thinking altruistically.

The setting is late nineteenth century in Petersburg and the surrounding Russian provinces and cities, and the novel is told from the point of view of the omniscient narrator, although action occasionally progresses from Ivan's point of view. The tone is frequently satirical and mocking; subtly pedagogical with themes of the right life; the inevitability of death; inner life vs. outer life. The black sack is a symbol. The novel is significant for its universally powerful portrayal of a man’s physical deterioration and subsequent spiritual rejuvenation at the moment of death, and because it is the first fiction which Tolstoy published after his conversion to radical Christianity. Several critics note a shift in his writing after his spiritual breakdown in the 1870s, which inspired him to write primarily on religious and philosophical issues while repudiating his earlier works. ‘‘The Death of Ivan Ilych’’ perfectly demonstrates this introspection as it magnifies a man’s struggle with how to live his life. This is the important message that Tolstoy is attempting to convey to his reader.

There are a number of themes, but the overriding one is mortality. Tolstoy believes that we can only truly lead meaningful lives if we gain a deep, spiritual understanding of that mortality which is our common human fate. Yet as the story begins, Ivan has no understanding of this. He's led a crushingly inauthentic life, one characterized by materialism, self-interest, and an obsession with the fleeting moment, the here and now. In other words, he has no true sense of his own mortality; he acts like he's going to live forever.

Ivan's spiritual life is nonexistent. And when he begins to experience the pain and torment of his physical ailments, he has nothing to fall back on; he cannot transcend the intense pain and the misery it causes. But eventually wisdom comes to Ivan Ilyich. He realizes that every single one of us is a synthesis of the material and the spiritual. He has spent the whole of his life up to this point living a purely material existence. Now, at long last, he is rediscovering the spirit within. And this rediscovery floods his heart with joy.

Ivan Ilyich's death ultimately comes to be seen as a regaining of lost spirituality rather than the simple expiration of his last breath. It has a qualitative dimension, one dependent on our constitution as not just physical creatures in a world of nature, but as profoundly spiritual beings whose deaths ultimately matter.

Leo Tolstoy's story "The Death of Ivan Illyich" (1886) is generally considered one of the best Russian stories ever written and one of the world's greatest short stories. It deals mainly with the psychological experiences that take place in a man who is dying of an incurable disease, which appears to be a form of cancer. Illyich suffers from increasing physical pain over a long period of time, but he also suffers from mental pain which Tolstoy describes as being even worse. He can't understand why this physical pain and mental torment should be happening to him. He has occasional periods of hopefulness when there is some remission of his physical symptoms, only to be plunged into deeper despair when the symptoms recur.

It is an extremely harrowing story because it takes the reader right up to the very moment of Illyich's death. But at the last moment he has an epiphany. He realizes that the life he has been leading has all been a mistake but that he can still make amends it by giving up his struggle to survive and freeing his family from the anguish he has been imposing on them with his protracted illness. Apparently it is when he stops thinking about himself that he is freed from both his physical and mental suffering and dies a peaceful death. 

A mere summary of the story cannot do justice to the greatness of this work of art by one of the world's foremost writers. It has been thoroughly covered by eNotes, as you can see by clicking on the reference links below.