The Death of Ivan Ilyich

1. The Death of Ivan Ilyich By Leo Tolstoy

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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-a-days 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.

6. 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.

7. 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?

8. The Fatal Misstep:  Ilyich's over-concern for the house which he has bought and decorated leads to him over-stepping 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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)

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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."

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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."

22. 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.

23. 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

24. 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!

25. Dickens and Tolstoy A close look reveals that the similarities between TheDeath 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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."

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. 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.

33. 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

34. 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/rearick/readings/manuscri/ivanilych/ilych_index.htm>.