Christian Themes
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a story of sin and redemption. Ivan had been blindly building what he thought was a good and proper life. He had completed his education, landed professional positions with increasing responsibilities and salary, married well, and surrounded himself with the outward signs of wealth—a large estate with handsome and stylish furnishings. However, Ivan’s obsession with work, money, and possessions, and his neglect of his family, brought on Ivan a personal crisis from which he could not recover. Ivan’s physical problems—which began when he fell from a ladder while obsessing over draperies—provoked the spiritual crisis that caused his anguish and eventually led to his death.
Ivan’s suffering, however, prompts a self-examination that leads ultimately to his redemption. That self-examination begins when Ivan asks God why he is allowing Ivan, who believes he has led a pleasant and proper life, to suffer. An inner voice questions whether Ivan has lived a good life, provoking Ivan to review his entire life, from his childhood to the time of his illness. This self-examination results in an epiphany for Ivan, as he realizes the sterility of a life of materialism and meaningless work, a life without love and human contact. On his deathbed, Ivan asks his son’s—and God’s—forgiveness for his errors and accepts his own death. His admission of guilt and acceptance of death relieves his suffering, allowing him to see light before he closes his eyes for the final time.
Ivan’s redemption, however, is private, recognized by no one else in Tolstoy’s tale. In the novella’s opening frame, Ivan’s colleagues go about their business, obsessing over their positions in the Russian law court bureaucracy; some are too busy to attend Ivan’s wake and funeral. After Ivan’s death, his widow, having learned nothing from her husband’s sufferings, is mainly concerned with receiving Ivan’s pension so that she can continue living a life devoted to material possessions.
The publication of The Death of Ivan Ilyich occurred during a period in Tolstoy’s life in which he became increasingly concerned with religious issues and closely studied the Gospels of the New Testament. Following a personal religious crisis during the late 1870’s, Tolstoy embraced a radical form of Christianity that is expressed in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and other works published during the 1880’s.
Death
Tolstoy grappled with a profound fear of death throughout much of his life. Through Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy illustrates how the proximity of death can bring about a meaningful urgency to life. Ivan Ilych only becomes aware of the superficiality of his social status when faced with his own mortality. He is petrified because he cannot escape death as he has other unpleasant realities—by keeping them distant and treating them disingenuously. In contrast, Gerasim represents a straightforward acceptance of death as a natural part of existence. There is a clear distinction between the high-class social pretenses Ivan Ilych is accustomed to and Gerasim's modest, servant lifestyle. Ivan Ilych endures a painful death, which only becomes bearable when he finally embraces it. As Gerasim tends to him, he comments, ‘‘We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?’’ Ivan Ilych’s denial of death highlights the emptiness of his life, as well as the lives of his colleagues and wife. They ignore his suffering, adhering to their societal norms even as his death nears. Ivan Ilych, however, cannot overlook his own imminent death. The stark reality of death is irrational and contradicts the illusion of ease and...
(This entire section contains 260 words.)
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comfort he has always maintained, and which those around him continue to uphold. In the end, death forces Ivan Ilych to confront the lack of compassion in his previously well-structured life. Once he acknowledges this, he is able to feel love and empathy for his son and wife, and with this newfound insight, his fear of death fades away.
Love and Pity vs. Pride
For most of his life, Ivan Ilych was motivated by pride and vanity. The society he was part of placed great importance on outward displays of wealth and propriety, significantly shaping both the Ilych family's dynamics and Ivan's career. He took pride in his seemingly friendly yet subtly condescending demeanor toward those who appeared before him at work, relishing his ability to manage impersonal "official" relationships. Ivan's pride is directly linked to his literal "fall" from a stepladder while adjusting curtains that the upholsterer had not arranged to his liking, as he sought to uphold certain social standards. This incident reflects the Biblical fall of Adam and Eve, where Ivan's pride leads to his downfall and subsequent suffering. However, through eventual selflessness and the compassion shown by Gerasim and his son, Ivan Ilych learns to experience love and come to terms with death. He is profoundly moved by Gerasim's straightforward acceptance of mortality and his comforting, compassionate care. Ivan is also touched when his son kisses his hand in his final moments. These experiences, coupled with his impending death and struggle against the metaphorical black sack, lead Ivan to realize that he feels pity for his son and wife. In a last act of humility, he seeks their forgiveness, abandoning the pride that once ruled his life and embracing love.
Nature vs. Civilization
Ivan Ilych lives in a secluded and superficial environment, deeply embedded in a society that his urban class idolizes. He lacks empathy for his wife when she becomes irritable during her pregnancies, further alienating himself by burying himself in his social roles to compensate for ignoring her needs. As a result, she mirrors this lack of compassion when he is on his deathbed, focusing instead on maintaining social appearances and being engrossed in the opera and their daughter’s engagement. These impersonal dynamics within the Ilych family and the insincere friendships between Ivan Ilych and his colleagues underscore the superficiality of his civilized world. Just as he used his friends and colleagues to climb the social ladder, they exploit his death for their benefit, eyeing the vacancy created by his passing. The value each character finds in others is purely transactional, based on what they can gain from one another. Similarly, at Ivan Ilych’s funeral, his wife’s main concern is securing financial support from the government after his death. The lack of humanity in Ivan Ilych’s world starkly contrasts with the lives of Gerasim and the childhoods of Ivan Ilych and his son, Vladimir. Gerasim, who is connected to the land and not part of Ivan Ilych’s social class, does not exhibit the same detachment towards death as Ivan Ilych’s friends and wife. For Gerasim, death is not an inconvenience to be ignored but a natural and pitiable part of life. Ivan Ilych reminisces about his childhood, before he adopted the facade of propriety that death has revealed as false, as his happiest times. He sees this same innocence in his son, who shows genuine pity and kisses his hand. The sincere compassion shown by Gerasim and Vladimir stands in stark contrast to the insincerity of his wife and colleagues, symbolizing the shallow civilized life that Ivan Ilych led before his profound realization at death.
Ordinary Middle-Class Life
As the title indicates, Leo Tolstoy’s story concentrates on the death of a very ordinary middle-class person. The second chapter opens with the sentence, “Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible,” which has been called one of the most frightening sentences in all literature. Ivan’s life has been lived according to those middle-class values set by his society. Ivan has always done the correct thing to achieve success; while in school, he did things that disgusted him until he noticed that those in good positions did the same things and did not consider them wrong.
In working at his career, he is punctilious, reserved, completely honest; when he has affairs, they are with women of the best society. He marries, not really for love but because this is what society expects him to do. Everything Ivan does is according to what one should do to rise in society; his values are material values, exemplified by his remodeling his house to look exactly like the homes of others in his social position. His relations with people have the semblance of friendliness, but he never develops any close or deep relationships.
Realization and Redemption
It is not until he experiences his fatal illness that Ivan ever questions his values and his life. Even the cause of his illness—a freak accident that occurred as he was hanging curtains—is insignificant. Ivan comes to the realization that his life has been wasted. It is only with his death that he comes to a joyful revelation that, though his life had been wrong, it can still be rectified. He thus dies at peace with himself and with the world.