Short Story Reading Worksheet
Historical/Regional setting.
Cast of Characters (Brief descriptions):
Primary Action of the story:
Quirks, twists, surprises:
Some significant lines from the story.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Historical/Regional setting.
● Takes place around when the novella was published: 1839-1884.
● St. Petersburg and in the provinces of Russia
Cast of Characters (Brief descriptions):
● Ivan Ilyich: He admires those with high social standing, and conforms his
values and behavior to their rules. He formalizes every human
relationship. In his official work, he is careful to remove all personal
concerns from consideration. In his private life, he adopts a fixed attitude
toward his family. When he becomes sick due to a disease with his kidney,
he eventually realizes the true qualities of a good life hours before his
death.
● Gerasim: Foil to Ivan, he is healthy, direct, and compassionate. He is Ivan’s
sick nurse throughout his sickness.
● Pyotr Ivanovich: Ivan’s closest friend. Just like Ivan, he values the
expectations of society over close relationships and goes to great lengths
to avoid what is uncomfortable.
● Praskovya Fedorovna: Ivan's wife and the mother of his children. Her
behavior toward others is artificial and self-interested. While showing
sympathy and concern for Ivan during his illness, her real attitude is one
of hostility and impatience for his death.
●
Schwartz: Ivan's colleague and friend. Schwartz is a well-dressed, playful,
thoroughly proper man. He ignores life's unpleasantness. At Ivan's
funeral, he is immune to all depressing influences and maintains his jovial
and lighthearted demeanor. It is clear that Schwartz is a kind of double for
Ivan.
● Vladimir Ivanich: Ivan's youngest son. Not yet corrupted by the beliefs and
values of his parents' social world, he is capable of forming empathetic
bonds with other people, and he is the only other person, besides Gerasim,
who truly understands Ivan and his condition.
● Lisa: Ivan's daughter. Lisa is very much like her mother. Selfish and easily
annoyed, Lisa resents any influence that distracts her from her own
contentment. Her father's suffering inconveniences her more than
anything else.
Primary Action of the story:
● Begins at the end of the story with Ivan’s death. Upon hearing about his death and
funeral, his colleagues only care about how it will affect their promotion and
stay lighthearted. His wife only cares about the money she will get and sees
Ivan’s death as an inconvenience to her.
● Ivan’s backstory: He was the second son of 3, and assimilates the values and
behavior of those with high social standing. He becomes a magistrate in the
judicial institutions and gets married out of a desire to fit in with the social class.
● He enjoys his easy life until his wife starts a family, and he begins to get his
fulfillment from work alone, with his family as only a formality.
● He eventually develops an illness in which he degenerates quickly, all while his
friends and family pretend he will get better. He realizes that it is not about
disease and hope, but life or death, yet his wife doesn’t try to understand her
husband’s hardships.
● As his health worsens, he is helped by his nurse Gerasim, a healthy, kind, young
man who helps him and keeps him company. Ivan comes to only want to be
around Gerasim and his youngest son, who are the only ones that take his
sickness seriously.
● As he is close to dying, he reflects back on his life, forcing himself to conclude
that his most enjoyment was during his childhood and decreased with time.
● He realizes his entire life was artificial and feels extreme joy, and dies.
Quirks, twists, surprises:
●
Turning point as Ivan realizes that his life was a lie that he kept feeding himself,
that following the path of society would bring him fulfillment.
Some significant lines from the story.
● “Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most
terrible.” - Ch 2
● “'Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,' it suddenly occurred to him. 'But
how could that be, when I did everything properly?' he replied, and immediately
dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death,
as something quite impossible.” - Ch 9
● “Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder to
breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom was a light…Just
then his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bedside. The dying
man was still screaming desperately and waving his arms. His hand fell on the
boy's head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to cry.” - Ch 12