The Death of Ivan Ilyich
By Leo Tolstoy
Chap 1
• Notice that this chapter begins with what would seem to
be the end of the story. The tension of the narrative
clearly does not come from whether or not Ivan Ilych will
live. What is important will be how he faces his
death. What is set up in this chapter is how completely
incapable his friends and even his wife are in feeling true
grief. They are all completely consumed by themselves.
• Peter's complete inability to know the correct way to
cross himself is very funny to me, but is also further
demonstrates that for him action has no value in itself
but only in how others will apprehend it. Decorum is the
key in this world.
Chap 2
• The Middle Way: traditionally considered an Aristotelian
ideal is here perverted to being a life unremarkable. One
is reminded of Christ's admonition that "I would prefer
you to be either hot or cold."
• The Determiners of Morality: Ilyich's opinion that what
he committed during his school days was perhaps not so
evil does not come from any inner awareness of
necessary stages of human development but from what
his society considers acceptable. This is problematic.
For if society becomes the indicator of morality it
becomes clear that there are no absolutes only current
trends of acceptance.
• Moral Deterioration: Notice the progression of sin from
being seduced by an ambitious woman, to having an
affair, to carousing, to actually visiting houses
prostitution.
• One sees a real moral degradation occurring here but all
society knows is that he is a pleasant fellow and so
words like libertine or lewd never get attached to his
name though by holy standards he clearly deserves
them.
• Chief Pleasre in his post is the potential power--since
Ilyich never abuses it--which he has over all those
around him.
• Situational Ethics: Notice that at the new position in the
new town he makes a new set of friends easily and
seems to have no difficulty with the fact that politically
they oppose his old good friends, the governor and his
wife.
• Marriage: One of the most important decisions in an
individual's life comes across as a lethargic "Why not?"
Love not a major player: ". . .the marriage gave him
personal satisfaction, and at the same time it was
considered the right thing by the most highly placed of
his associates.
• Marriage as Life: Marriage does not always afford
pleasure, especially when it brings forth life. The
inconvenience of making life is something Ilyich does not
comprehend (he reminds me of many couples now-adays who marry and decide that children are just too
much bother. I am reminded of Henry Higgens responce
to Eliza when she asked him whether he hadn't been
concerned about the trouble remaking her would
cause. He says "The world would have never been
created it its Creator had been afraid of making trouble:
making life means making trouble!" But Ilyich would
prefer the sterility of not making life: When he realizes
that having children "was not always conducive to the
pleasures and amenities of life, but on the contrary often
infringed both comfort and propriety, and that he must
therefore entrench himself against such infringement.
And Ivan Ilych began to seek for means of doing so.
• His official duties were the one thing that imposed upon
Praskovya Fedorovna, and by means of his official work
and the duties attached to it he began struggling with his
wife to secure his own independence."
• Divorce in all but Name: Tolstoy describes the decline
of the marriage between two selfish people will use even
the selfless topic of educating their remaining children as
a means to bring up old battles. Soon only sex was
left. Of course divorce as a legal activity is never
considered even though the two are as emotionally
divorced as possible because such behavior would be
socially indecorous.
Chap 3
• Poor, Poor Me! Ivan Ilyich's perception that his lot in life is
"unfair" and unusual is in a way humorous since it reminds me
of the many times I have shaken my fist at the fates (God?)
and have claimed that my lot was unusually difficult. This is
the kind of humor which one laughs at only to cover a personal
wince.
• Pitiful Prime Mover: What kind of life can one say one has
lived when the force which motivates one to advance is
initially just a way to avoid being intimate with one's wife and
later as a means to avenge oneself upon those who have
supposedly failed to appreciate one?
• The Fatal Misstep: Ilyich's over-concern for the house
which he has bought and decorated leads to him overstepping his own abilities. This hurt he receives causes
(according to contemporary medical theory) the hurt
which will lead to cancer. It is difficult to guess what
Tolstoy's attitudes toward domestic environments were,
but clearly to loose one's life over such a minor thing as
hanging drapes is wretchedly inappropriate.
• The Irony of the Outside Voice: Although The Death
of Ivan Ilych is sad story, there are, in fact, many
moments of humor within it. Peter's absurd inability to
be certain how to cross himself in chapter one is one
such case. In that situation as in this, Tolstoy uses an
outside narrator (third person narration) who comments
of the realities of Ivan's life so the the reader does not fall
into the same illusions that Ilych does.
• Kitsch: Poor Taste: This interesting term which
often comes up when critics describe elements of
20th century pop culture also seems appropriate
here.
• Kitsch refers to things which fail to fulfill the unsaid,
second purpose for which they were made. A lamp
gives light, but a lamp formed out of a sitting plaster
Buddha is supposed to give light AND suggest an
exotic touch of the far east.
• In truth anyone from that part of the world would
probably be offended by the incorporation of a holy
image into a house lamp. In the same way Ivan's
furniture fails in its second purpose. It is supposed to
serve the needs of the family to sit eat and sleep
upon, but is is also intended to impress those who see
it as aristocratic--suggesting greater wealth and
culture than the family actually has.
• Once again this is laughable, but I don't laugh too hard. In
truth the half sized breastplate of armor which hangs on my
office wall is kitsch. It's primary function is to decorate my
wall. But it is also supposed to suggest that the owner of that
office has chivalric and aristocratic qualities. However, real
homes of the aristocratic former warrior cast (knights) have
full sized, historical suites of armor and the residents of those
castles would laugh at the mouse-sized breast plate hanging
from my wall. Like the friends of Ilyich who are impressed by
his choice of furniture, the only people impressed by my
chivalric, aristocratic wall hangings are those who, like me,
have never set a foot inside a real castle.
• The Divided Self: In Ivan Ilyich's ability to separate his
personal from his official personalities I am reminded of
Dickens' character of Mr. Wemmick of Great
Expectations. However, in contrast to Wemmick, who must
physically leave the city in order to put on his personal, Ilyich
is a superior divider of his psyche in that he is able to shift
from one to the other in a single moment and not emotionally
feel the strain.
Chap 4
• Righteous Smugness: How much of our righteousness is
nullified in God's eyes by our own smugness for doing the
right thing? It's the old temptation described by T.S. Eliot in
his Murder in the Cathedral of "doing the right thing for the
wrong reason."
• Doctors and Lawyers: Here is another funny observation
that just as in twentieth century America the two occupations
which seem to attract some of the greatest humbugs in
Tolstoy's time were being a lawyer and being a doctor. I do
not plan to enter into a diatribe against either profession
because we need them both--but more than any other
professions those involved in these two fields know they are
needed and seem to have more of a chance to put on a
condescending air than anyone else. Does a check out clerk
ever look condescending at me because I do not know how to
run the cash register? Does the computer programer carry
with him an air of pompousness? Do I when I stand before my
class? (I hope not)
• I suspect that the center cog in all of this machinery of
affectation comes from the final point that when we go to
see either lawyers or doctors we are in desperate
need. Something is out of whack either in our insides or
in our outer position in society--there are few things more
important than health and legal status.
• Worry: The Death of Ivan Ilyich is one of those works
my wife would prefer I NOT read. I am a notorious
hypochondriac; I have been one since my
childhood. Reading Ilyich's experience and his
downward journey makes me like him here fear and
listen to the account as a measuring rod for myself.
• The Christian Icon: Very common in Greek Orthodox
Christianity, such an icon would be a painting of Mary
with the baby Jesus. Some of these were supposed to
have healing qualities. Ivan's listening in about such
thing is the first mention that I note of Ivan Ilyich
considering a supernatural cure. To most of my fellow,
Nazarene, Christians the turning to an icon would appear
as foolish as Ivan describes it. However, I am certain
that to a pure materialist our prayer chains and share
times might seem as equally absurd.
• The Isolation of Illness: One quality of
serious illness which I know I myself can
not escape when it has and when it
will come to me is that even though we
have an MVNC prayer chain activated
by phone calls of concern (all of which
very helpful), when it comes to truth,
only those who are immediately involved
with me honestly care. My brother or
sister in Christ may (and many do) raise
me up in prayer.
•
Some may let fall a tear because my situation; it reminds them of
their own personal pain and they do express concern. However, just like
my baby who can go from to despair to delight in a second, those who are
outside the circle of the affected quickly move on to the tasks of their
lives. I know that this has been true of me when I hear the prayer
concerns over MVNU's voice mail. I stop, I remind God of what he
already knows, and then I quickly move on. Sometimes I feel guilty about
this, but honestly what can we do? There are so many deep and abiding
concerns carried by co-workers. As C.S. Lewis notes in A Grief Observed
such events emphasize the basic quality of isolation in which we travel.
Chap 5
•
Notice how now Ivan's life is beginning to center around his
room rather than going elsewhere. He goes out a bit in this
chapter but much of the action is centered around one room.
• My mother, Rev. Ann Rearick, who works in Hospice once
told me that "in the end, all we have is a bed and the four
corners of a single room."
• This chapter depicts the movement from Ivan going to see
doctors to doctors coming to see Ivan
Chap 6
• This chapter marks an interesting shift in the narrative strategy
of the novel. Up to this point, the narrator has described Ivan's
situation from the outside, relating his actions and feelings from
a distance. Now, however, the narrator begins to describe Ivan's
situation by reporting his thought processes and mental
reflections directly. The narrator closes the distance between the
audience and Ivan by providing a glimpse of Ivan's internal
dialogue.
• The absence of such internal dialogue prior to Chapter V seems
to suggest that Ivan lacked (or was unaware of) an inner life.
The prevalence of internal dialogue after Chapter V suggests
that here Ivan is slowly becoming aware of an inner life.
• The narrator reveals Ivan's growing
awareness of a private world separate from
the external one of daily activity by
introducing Ivan's consciousness of an
important, "intimate matter."
• "*It*" is of course Death, especially the
Death's Head as pictured. However, Ivan
can not and will not name it.
• Tolstoy makes use of several phrases
throughout this part of the text that both
signify and symbolize his imminent death:
"[T]ried to light the candle," "staring with
wide-open eyes into the darkness," and "his
breathing ceased."
Chap 7
• The thinking of someone else. Ivan's embarrassment before
Gerasim is, while sad, an example also of him thinking of
someone else besides himself.
• The coming of comfort:. "but Gerasim's strength and vitality
did not mortify but soothed him."
• The Denial of the Truth: My mother has noted that what the
dying want most of all is to be able to talk about dying.
• Ivan's inability to come to terms with his mortality by means
of logic is understandable. Logic serves to remove everything
individual, to deal with cases in terms of generalities. Thus, no
personal understanding of death can be reached by focusing on
logic.
• It is fitting that Ivan tries to block his consciousness of death
by resuming his old current of thought, and by erecting
screens. Yet such escapism, although successful for Ivan's
colleagues, is no help to him. Death penetrates every screen
that he constructs.
• Tolstoy intentionally confuses "death" and "pain" by
referring to both with the pronoun "It." This deliberate
confusion is effective because it serves to reaffirm the idea that
just as Ivan cannot escape pain, so too, he cannot escape death.
Pain makes him conscious of death. By the end of Chapter VI,
Ivan's death is a foregone conclusion.
Chap 8
• Gerasim is Ivan's sick nurse and the butler's assistant. In this
novel, Gerasim serves as a foil to Ivan: healthy, vigorous,
direct, he is everything that Ivan is not.
• Tolstoy's moral elevation of Gerasim, a "peasant lad," is both a
defiant attack on convention and traditional authority as well as
a clear statement about the proper way to live.
• Not the elite, nor the wealthy, nor the nobles experience the
peace and assurance that Gerasim does. Only the peasant
servant has no fear of death and no discomfort in dealing with
someone who is dying.
• Unlike the other characters, Ivan understands that
unpleasantness and unpredictability are a part of life.
• He accepts unpleasantness and pain as a part of life. He
understands that the world is unpredictable, and he knows the
value of sympathy.
• Gerasim's qualities temporarily rescue Ivan from his life of
isolation and unhappiness. Ivan is cut of from his family,
friends, and colleagues not only by their indifference to his
predicament but also by his own chosen attitude toward life.
• Through Gerasim, Ivan renews contact with another human
being.
When they had gone it seemed to Ivan Ilych 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.
Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour.
Everything remained the same and there was no cessation.
And the inevitable end of it all became more and more
terrible.
"Yes, send Gerasim here," he replied to a question Peter
asked.
Chap. 9
• In this chapter Ivan sends Gerasim away, and as soon as the
servant leaves the room he begins weeping. In agony he cries
out to God, "Why hast Thou done all this? Why has Thou
brought me here? Why, why dost Thou torment me so
terribly?"
• Then he grows quiet; he becomes highly attentive and seems
to hear a voice speaking from within his soul. "What is it you
want?" the voice asks him.
• Ivan answers that he wants to live well and pleasantly, as he
did before. Yet when Ivan begins to call to mind the best
moments of his pleasant life, they seem "trivial and often
nasty."
The judge is coming!' The judge is coming, the judge!" he
repeated to himself.
"Here he is, the judge. But I am not guilty!" he exclaimed
angrily. "What is it for?" And he ceased crying, but turning
his face to the wall continued to ponder on the same
question: Why, and for what purpose, is there all this
horror? But however much he pondered he found no
answer. And whenever the thought occurred to him, as it
often did, that it all resulted from his not having lived as he
ought to have done, he at once recalled the correctness of his
whole life and dismissed so strange an idea.
• In spite of his confusion Ivan has made a major step in this
chapter. By sending his wife away when she comes to sit with
him, Ivan symbolically commits himself to the "new life"
confronting him. He rejects the artificiality and pretense of his
past life, and thereby resolves the tension that had been
established in Chapter 8.
The Black Bag
• The symbol of the bag, much like the story itself, operates on
two levels. As well as its function as a symbol of death, the
bag also symbolizes a womb, the source of life. The pain and
suffering that Ivan experiences while passing through the bag
into the light refer to the trauma of birth into new life. The
duality of the symbol holds a key to the story. In Ivan's life,
what appears like physical death is actually spiritual rebirth,
while his old life was the cause of spiritual death. Things are
not what they seem, and the action must be read in reverse.
Ivan's life was his death, and his death brings new life.
• In a way that only Christians can understand The Death of
Ivan Ilych could have been entitled the the Rebirth of Ivan
Ilych
• The fact that Ivan hears an inner voice, "the
voice of his soul," marks a significant advance in
his spiritual development. For the first time the
reader receives an indication that Ivan is more
than a physiological being.
• As Ivan begins to examine his life, the similarity
between Ivan Ilych and the Scrooge of Charles
Dickens's A Christmas Carol becomes strikingly
apparent. For both Ivan and Scrooge, the
recognition that that they have lived badly entails
the memory of childhood, and for both
protagonists the bright and joyful memories of
childhood degenerate into unfulfilling and empty
adult lives.
Can you believe it? I got this from Spark-notes rather than from my
usual Dickensian obsessions!
Dickens and Tolstoy
A close look reveals that the similarities between The
Death of Ivan Ilych and A Christmas Carol extend far
beyond a similar process of recognition on the part of the
two protagonists. In structure, genre, and theme, A
Christmas Carol, written before The Death of Ivan Ilych,
provides a sort of model for Tolstoy's own work. Much like
The Death of Ivan Ilych, the narrative of A Christmas Carol
begins in the present and flashes back to the past. It
employs an almost identical narrative vantage point. And it
deals with the life and life crisis of a representative member
of a society gone wrong. But the similarity is
understandable. It is not a secret that Tolstoy admired
Dickens more than any other writer. Tolstoy wrote of
Dickens, "I consider him the greatest novelist of the
nineteenth century." Along with having a picture of
Dickens on his wall, and reading almost everything
Dickens wrote, Tolstoy internalized and reshaped Dickens's
work. It is not unreasonable to say that it was Tolstoy's
reading of Dickens that provided the creative impulse that
led to the production of The Death of Ivan Ilych.
Chap 10
• Although surrounded by a populous town and numerous
acquaintances, Ivan experiences a sense of loneliness more
profound than if he were "either at the bottom of the sea or
under the earth."
• Time, for Ivan, is contracting. The first four chapters of the
novel span approximately forty years of Ivan's life, the second
four chapters span several months, and the last four cover a
time period of no more than four weeks. While Chapter 7
mentions that Ivan's illness is in its third month, Chapter 10
begins with the words, "Another fortnight passed." The
steadily decreasing units of time mentioned throughout the text
serve to highlight the fact that time is running out for Ivan.
• As mentioned earlier, a terminal illness constricts one’s
existence bit by bit.
• Now, along with time concentration already mentioned, Ivan's
spatial dimensions are also shrinking. From his initial
migrations between provinces, Ivan comes to settle in a city
and acquires an apartment. Before long he is confined to his
study inside that apartment, and by Chapter 10 he can no
longer move from his position on the sofa. Tolstoy uses this
contraction of time and space both for artistic and practical
purposes. The narrative tool not only brilliantly emphasizes
Ivan's movement toward death; it also builds tension before
the climax at the moment of Ivan's death.
• Yet Tolstoy also builds tension in another way. For the most
part, each chapter in The Death of Ivan Ilych is smaller than
the one before it. The size of each successive chapter
decreases, and when matched with the contracting temporal
and spatial dimensions, the decreasing size lends a gradually
accelerating rhythm to the final chapters. Tolstoy draws our
attention to this effect with his metaphor of a stone falling
downward with increasing velocity.
Chap. 11
• Starts of with Ivan angry at family and visitors.
• It occurs to him that his official life, the arrangement
of his family, and all his social interests are actually
false. He wants to defend his life path, but finds that
there is nothing to defend.
• Realizing that the only truth in his life was when he
attempted to struggle against the expectations and
values of high society, Ivan realizes that his life "was
not real at all, but a terrible and huge deception
which had hidden both life and death."
• Notice that Ivan’s pain increases as his internal torment
continues.
• He does find relief for a bit when he takes communion
(which for form’s sake was insisted upon by his wife).
• However, the anger and pain returns when his thought of
the falseness of Praskovya's life.
• Ivan's realization has affected a shift in the focal point
and intensity of his spiritual suffering. Ivan no longer
feels obliged to take part in the pretense around him. He
confronts both Praskovya and the doctor with the truth of
his condition.
• Now, however, Ivan's spiritual pain is caused by the
possibility that his whole life has been in error. Yet
despite Ivan's new knowledge, Ivan still does not wholly
relinquish the hope that his life was lived rightly. Even
though he is now keenly aware of the spiritual
component of life, he is not yet ready to fully admit the
error of his life.
Chap. 12
• Begins in agony, the screaming which we first hear
about in the opening chapter from the wife’s point of
view “how I have suffered!”
• Suddenly, at the end of the third day, "some force"
strikes Ivan in the chest and side. It pushes him
through the sack and into the presence of a bright
light. Ivan compares the sensation to the feeling of
being in a railway car that you think is moving
forward, but suddenly realize is moving backward.
Just at this moment, Ivan's son, Vasya, approaches his
bedside. As Ivan's hand falls on his son's head, Vasya
begins to cry. When Ivan catches sight of the light, it
is revealed to him that though his life has not been a
good one, it can still be set right.
• He asks himself, "What is the right thing?" He opens
his eyes, sees his son kissing his hand, and feels sorry
for him.
• His wife approaches his bed, her face wet with tears,
and he feels sorry for her too. He realizes that life will
be better for his family when he dies, and desires to
say as much, but not having the strength to speak, he
understands that he must act. He indicates to his wife
to take Vasya away, and tries to say, "Forgive me,"
but he only manages to say, "Forego."
• Some others would have allowed Ivan to have a final
speech but he is too much of a realist to allow what
would have come across as melodramatic.
• The climactic moment of The Death of Ivan Ilych, the
changeless instant when Ivan passes through the black sack
into the light, fully resolves the contradictions and conflicts
present throughout the novel. As Ivan is reborn into the
light, the spiritual finally transcends the physiological. Life
conquers death, and the authentic prevails over the
artificial. At the very moment of his rebirth, when Ivan
asks himself, "What is the right thing?"
• Ivan's hand falls on Vasya's head and he feels sorry for
him. Ivan's sincere and heartfelt expression of compassion,
coupled with physical human contact, bridges the gap that
Ivan had created between himself and others.
• The climactic moment also completes the logic of reversal
that has been operating throughout the story. Just as Ivan's
life has caused his inner, spiritual death, so too, through his
physical death Ivan achieves new spiritual life.
• The metaphor of the railway car captures the
idea. At his moment of illumination, Ivan
realizes that he has actually been traveling
opposite his intended direction. Moving up in
social esteem has not led to joy, fulfillment,
and life, but to misery, emptiness, and death.
Blinded by the values of high society, he has
been traveling in the wrong direction on the
road of life. and experiences extreme joy.
• When Ivan realizes his error and comes to a
fuller understanding of the nature of life, he is
reborn spiritually
Sites Cited
• Miller, Nick. SparkNote on The Death of Ivan
Ilych. 14 Mar. 2007.
<http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ivanilych/>.
• Rearick, Anderson “Notes on The Death of
Ivan Ilych.” Dr. Rearick’s Readers’ Corner. 13
Mar. 2007
<http://nzr.mvnu.edu/faculty/trearick/english/r
earick/readings/manuscri/ivanilych/ilych_inde
x.htm>.