The Death of Ivan Ilych

Favourite Quotes

“Ivan Ilych’s life has been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible” - p. 255

Summary

• Chapter 1: the books opens up with the announcement of the death of Ivan Ilych, a local lawyer. His friends and colleague immediately think about their own position, possible moves for promotion, etc, rather than thinking about their dead friend
• Chapter 2: we learn about Ivan’s life. He is an ordinary man, a middle child, nothing is special about him, his life “has been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible”. This chapter talks a lot about his family life and work:
  • his marriage starts okay but goes downhill when they have their first child.
  • he wanted independence from his wife and family, so he decided to occupy his time with work mainly, this in turn made him more ambitious and he got a promotion (assistant district attorney) and so he dove into work even more
  • him and his wife would fight often and became distant from each other. Rather than thinking this was a problem, he viewed this at the normal state of being, and ensured that things stayed this way; i.e. that they remain distant from one another. He did this by spending less time at home, and when he did have to be home, he tried to invite guests over
  • he loves his work; he loves the status and power it gives him, he was able to “ruin anybody he wishes to ruin”. He found pleasure in work.
• Chapter 3: we learn more about his life. He later gets a promotion in another city, and for a time he finds more pleasure in setting up his house (getting furniture, wallpaper, etc), than from work itself
  • he strives to make his house match the ideal he set for himself: a member of society with status, bourgeois, materialist, etc
• Chapter 4: this is where the story of his sickness begins; it starts with pain on his left side and a weird taste in his mouth. Ivan becomes irritable and often starts fights to the point where his wife is sick of him and wishes he were dead, if only his salary would continue post-death.
  • Ivan goes to a doctor who says it might be an appendix issue. Ivan strictly follows what the doctor prescribes
  • more tests reveal the initial diagnosis was wrong. Ivan stops taking the medication
  • Ivan decides to deal with the sickness by forcing himself to think he is better, but anything discomfort in his life, like issue at work, fight with wife, or bad cards when playing bridge, causes his pain and sickness to flare up
  • people around him don’t take his illness seriously, like his wife and friends
  • Ivan comes to the realization that he’s all alone with no one who understands or pities him
  • it’s interesting to note that Ivan’s symptoms are similar to his wife’s symptoms when she was pregnant, and his wife’s reaction to his illness is similar to Ivan’s reaction to his wife’s pregnancy symptoms
• Chapter 5: Ivan continues to struggle with his illness. His brother-in-law visits and secretly thinks that Ivan already looks like a dead man. This chapter covers Ivan’s illness from his own perspective, from his own inner dialogue
  • Ivan grapples with the understanding that his illness is not about sickness or health, but rather life or death. The idea of his own mortality terrifies him.
• Chapter 6: Ivan finally understands his own individuality. Due to this individuality, the thought of his death is incomprehensible to him.
  • Ivan is forced to face his pain/death at every turn; there is no escape
  • the previous things that made him forget about his pain/death no longer work
  • pain and death are now one and the same; Tolstoy simply refers to them as “it”
• Chapter 7: Ivan is on the last legs of his illness, he will die any day now. Morphine doesn’t relieve the pain, he has no control over bodily functions like going to the bathroom, etc. But he finds a new source of comfort: his servant Gerasim
  • Gerasim is the only one who understands that Ivan is dying. Everyone else around him simply thinks he’s ill and will recover soon
  • Ivan is really bothered by the fact that no one cares about his situation, which is why Gerasim’s care means a lot to him
  • Gerasim makes it clear to Ivan that all of us die one day, and he’s simply serving a dying man and hopes one day someone will do that same for him
  • of all the people to care for Ivan, it is the peasant servant Gerasim; someone who is well-versed in the unpredictable nature of the world, in its struggles and pains. On the other hand, the elite/people of ‘society’ are the opposite, they are like Ivan, they can only see the orderliness of the world
• Chapter 8: Ivan’s wife and family are preparing to go for a play. This is quite interesting considering Ivan’s life seems be like a play; just an act, a lie, falsity, etc
  • this chapter further dives into the lies being told around him, no one is truthful to him. His wife and family act as if he’s merely sick and not dying
• Chapter 9: he has a dream about falling into a black bag. In this chapter he is mainly contemplating his life and past pleasures and found that things aren’t as they seemed. His life was not that pleasurable afterall, after childhood
  • the black bag represents death. This chapter marks the start of his spiritual death and rebirth
  • his old life, his life of impersonality and detachment is what caused his spiritual death. In other words, Ivan’s life was his death and his death brings new life
  • Ivan has an internal dialogue with (his) voice, it asks “what is it that you want”… this signifies his entry into a new life, a new spiritual life, a spiritual birth
• Chapter 10: there are few interesting things Tolstoy did:
  • as the book progresses, each chapter gets shorter and shorter. The time within the story gets shorter too (the first few chapters were 40 years, the next few were a few months, and the last few chapters are a few weeks at most), and spatially Ivan becomes more constricted (started off travelling province to province, ended by stuck on the sofa due to his illness)
    • this represents that Ivan’s time is running out. He’s dying
  • Ivan recognizes his illness is more spiritual in nature rather than physiological, but he still doesn’t admit it was due to him not living life correctly.
• Chapter 11: Ivan is increasingly more angry; he yells at his wife to go away and treats the doctor that same way, telling him there’s nothing he can to do fix him. More than the physical pain, what truly torments him is his mental anguish
  • it is during this chapter that he asks himself whether or not he’s actually lived life correctly. He realizes that his career, family life, social life, etc, are all false. He now knows he never lived a real life.
  • Ivan now knows that a proper life entails acknowledge of death and appreciating the true joys of life. Unpleasantness is a fact of life, and by accepting this you can find joy in the little things.
  • Ivan accepts the spiritual component of life, but still doubts whether or not his life was lived rightly
• Chapter 12: as Ivan is screaming in agony, his son Vasya comes and kisses his hand. It is as this point Ivan realizes his life has not been a good one, but he can still set things right
  • Ivan no longer fears death, instead he sees light! Ivan is overwhelmed with joy
  • is is Ivan’s heartfelt expression of compassion to Vasya and his physical contact with him that bridges the gap Ivan had between himself and the world. His detached impersonal outlook has been purged from him.

Lessons Learned & Ideas

Notes & Quotes

• Selfishness
  • the first reaction of Ivan’s colleagues and friends upon hearing of his death, is of a selfish nature; they can take his position at work, Ivan’s future promotion could go to them instead, etc. Additionally, they think that going to Ivan’s house to pay respects is more of a “chore” - chapter 1
• Fear of death
  • Ivan’s friend Peter, seems to be greatly afraid of death, as are some other colleagues of theirs. Many times Peter is confronted with death in chapter 1 yet refuses to think about it - chapter 1
  • Death represents the meaning of life; if you don’t want to face death, then you can’t truly live - chapter 1
  • Ivan is scared of his own mortality - p. chapter 5
• Following what society wants
  • Ivan gets married for 2 reasons: personal satisfaction, and most ‘highly placed’ people in society considered it the right thing for him to do - chapter 2
  • by the end of the story, Ivan realizes that moving up the social hierarchy has led to emptiness, misery, and ultimately death
  • Ivan often says in the book that he does xyz because “it’s what one ought to do”. That sums up his life. He only does that which he is supposed to do. Nothing is PERSONAL to him. This is why he never truly ‘lives’.
• Ivan’s character
  • from chapter 1 and 2, we can see that Ivan’s life is very impersonal; he’s distanced himself from his family, the most personal thing to a person. In chapter 1 in the after math of his death, his death was also a very impersonal affair from the eyes of his closest friends and colleagues, one could argue this is karma. Ivan is closing himself off from life itself.
  • from the first 3 chapters, we can see the Ivan strives to make his life as impersonal and formal as possible; in his career as a judge he makes things as formal as possible, in his home he maintains distance from his family, he keeps formal contact with the best people in society and invites them over (which helps in maintaining distance from his family), he enjoys playing bridge (card game) and enjoys the logical, congruent nature of it. All this shows that Ivan avoids or ignores the messy, or the “real” aspects of life. Does Ivan even truly live? Does he even have a real life?
  • Ivan simply lives life in a very disconnected manner… honestly very similar to how most people live their life… so imagine what happens when you take a guy like that, and all of a sudden force him to confront DEATH, something he has never thought about in his life, something so so personal that he doesn’t even know how to comprehend or understand it
• Detachment of life itself
  • Ivan deals with people in a strict, cold, external, detached way as a judge. In chapter 4, the doctor deals with him in the same way and isn’t happy about it
  • Ivan deals with his wife’s pregnancy symptoms in a detached cold way, and she reacts the same to his illness in chapter 4
  • chapter 7 really shows the tables turning; Ivan is moved by the care-giving of Gerasim, his peasant servant. He finally reconnects to another human being. His cold, detached way of living is no more.
• Gerasim’s role
  • chapter 7 goes into Gerasim and Ivan’s relationship
  • Gerasim lifts Ivan’s legs on his shoulders, a position often used for pregnant women. Gerasim plays the role of a ‘midwife’ for Ivan who is going through a sort of spiritual rebirth
  • Gerasim is also the representation for truthfulness; no one around Ivan is telling him the truth. Gerasim acknowledges that Ivan is dying, a truth no one else said to him.
  • It’s clear that “the lie” is what torments Ivan the most, why is why Gerasim’s truthfulness is so refreshing
• ‘the lie’
  • in chapter 7 we see that Gerasim is only one telling the truth to Ivan. Everyone else is lying
  • no one else wants to acknowledge he’s dying, they just say he’ll get better. In other words, they are not accepting the unpleasant aspects of life, similar to how Ivan lived his whole life. That includes not thinking about death/their mortality.
  • so this lie that torments Ivan so much is actually a representation of ‘the lie’ of greater society, it represents the false way he lived his whole life; i.e. in utter denial of the harshness of life, of the unpleasant aspects of life

Main Idea of the Book / Key Themes

• Ivan’s worldview
  • he lives a life so detached, so impersonal, so external, it’s not even a “life” at all
  • when he gets sick, he is forced to question his worldview because everyone else around him is treating him the same way: so detached and impersonal
  • when Gerasim, his peasant servant, cares for him, it is the only thing that brings him comfort, because he’s the only one who truly knows and understands Ivan’s situation
  • Ivan eventually comes to the realization that he’s been on the wrong path his entire life. His race to climb the social ladder only led to misery, emptiness, and ultimately death.
• Tolstoy’s message is that having compassion for and empathetic connection with other humans beings is the way to live a ‘true’ fulfilled life
• One way to look at Ivan’s death is not the cessation of life (he barely had a ‘life’…), but rather its affirmation… he was spiritually reborn.
• a proper life involves: - having compassion for and empathetic connections with other human beings - messiness and various sources of unpleasantries - acceptance of death - ONLY once you have these 3 things can you live a proper, happy life.

Reflections

This was a great read. I really liked the story. Very insightful.

The overall lessons I took are:

• don’t just live life… LIVE life. With empathy, emotion, compassion.
• you must not be detached, cold, impersonal
• don’t wait until it’s too late! You don’t want to be on your death bed with so many regrets