World Literature

He asked himself, “What is the right thing?” and grew still, listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry for him.– Chapter 12.

Death, though often is portrayed as a frightful end, can signal a new beginning. Such is the case for the shallow and self-absorbed main character from Leo Tolstoy’s The Death Of Ivan Ilych. During the last few hours of his life, Ilych comes to the realization that he has been unhappy for his entire adulthood. Ultimately, his escape from deception and expose to truth help him to experience actual joy and compassion before passing on. The passage above is taken from a scene in the last chapter when he has realized his “wrong” in life and is now pondering over the question “What is the right thing?”. In describing Ilych’s contemplation, Tolstoy uses the particularly interesting phrase “grew still, listening”. This word choice, though subtle, is effective in marking a vivid image in the readers’ minds. It seems like Ilych is gradually reaching out to a superior being, most possibly God, and waiting for an answer to his question. The appearance of a superior being hints at Tolstoy’s religious transition when writing this novella and at a possibility of an afterlife. It also suggests Ilych’s acceptance of his low stance in spiritual life; Ilych is shown with a display of fear by his act of motionless, putting him in an inferior position. Then, like a sign from God, the next sentence presents a sweet and loving gesture from Ilych’s son: a kiss on his hand. His son’s act of pure love and compassion has touched Ilych’s once-selfish heart, and Ilych “opened his eyes”. The last sentence is an excellent example of how Tolstoy brilliantly reveal a change in his main character through a simple but powerful sentence. While it can be understood simply as a narration of Ilych’s actions, most may view it as Ilych’s final awakening. For the first time, Ilych has really “looked at his son”. All barriers that Ilych put up to keep his life pleasant, proper and decorous come tumbling down. He finally feels a human connection and even “felt sorry” for his son. After numerous attempts to escape his suffering, Ilych has found that compassion is the only way. And maybe it is the “right” way to live life. Another interpretation of this scene is that Ilych is looking at a younger version of himself through his son and feels sorry for how a life has been wasted. But maybe Ilych is just simply feeling sorry for leaving his son behind in a world filled with deception and hypocrisy. Through Tolstoy’s astute word choice and simple but effective language, readers are able to grasp Ilych’s rebirth in death through love and compassion.

“I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and how stupid. It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is.”

Surely we humans are the greatest of creatures to have ever graced the earth, yet we are so fragile and blind to our own mortality. In the above excerpt from the passage we see Ivan Ilych recount his misfortune after entering the drawing room from which he fell. Strangely enough Ilych mentions his eventual demise over a curtain in conjunction with “storming a fort” where he then remarks over its stupidity. Ilych’s comment is strange because of the large contrast the two scenarios share with each other. Death by curtain fall is the opposite of a glamorous death and is indeed quite embarrassing while on the other hand a soldier storming a fort only to meet their brave end can be romanticized about due to its nature. This is significant because it shows how Tolstoy is reminding the reader of their own mortality. To perish in battle is an obvious possibility when going to war however to die over a curtain is an anomaly and the chances are slim to none, yet Ilych suffered this fate. This is strengthened when taking a deeper look at Ilych as he comes to the realization of his mortality when he says “It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is.”  The raw emotion of anger and sorrow says it all, Ilych was consumed by his success and built his life around the blueprint of the aristocracy, much like how most people mold themselves around the ideals of society. It is this very aspect of being average which links the reader to Ilych and though most people will never step foot onto the battlefield, the circumstances of Ilych’s death sounds an alarm to people letting them know they are not omnipotent and that the most meaningless things such as a curtain can play a role in their eventual demise, solidifying their mortality in the most unexpected of ways.

“The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal.” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius – man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.” (71)

Ivan Ilych a man who held a high position within the society at the courts is now living under denial with the situation he was living at that moment, desperate to the thought that his days were numbered and death was something he could not fathom. He knew the truth about the Kiesewetter’s logic that Caius as a mortal man would eventually die, but that truth did not cut for himself. It was very difficult for him to understand. Caius although a man Ilych calls him an imaginary or abstract man that had not experienced life; with so many thoughts and emotions, which Caius (an abstract man) never had, it was not time to go. Tolstoy now brings a comparison which makes us, the readers, see him with  different eyes as he is confronted by his gloomy reality;  A man who was able to play the part as he entered the courts to do his job and was able to separate work and pleasure is now consumed by his own demons.

“Oh terribly! He screamed unceasingly, not for minutes but for hours. For the last three days he screamed incessantly. It was unendurable. I cannot understand how I bore it; you could hear him three rooms off. Oh, what I have suffered!”

Picture a wife complaining about her dying husband’s relentless screaming on his deathbed and one has entered a scene from The Death Of Ivan Ilych’s first chapter. More precisely, it is the scene from the above passage. The speaker, newly-widowed Praskovya Fedorovna, is recalling her spouse’s last days to a family friend – Peter Ivanovich. What so remarkable about this paragraph is Leo Tolstoy’s subtle sarcastic tone in Fedorovna’s dialogue. In the first couple of sentences, Fedorovna appears to the audience as how any woman would when her partner passes away, sorrowful and despondent. But as one proceeds along the dialogue, he or she will find pieces of her fallen mask, slowly unveiling her true color – an egotistical and emotionless upper-class woman. When she cries: “It was unendurable.”, most of the readers probably assume that she is referring to her husband’s suffering. Yet, interestingly enough, it is revealed in the next sentence that she is actually describing her own agonizing pain from hearing Ilych’s constant screaming. Logically, the screaming represents the level of pain Ilych was enduring. However, it seems like the more he screamed (or the more pain he went through), the more irritated Fedorovna got. And to top it all, she whines: “Oh, what I have suffered!” at the end of her speech. In a way, it is almost funny how all her complaints are better suited if they were spoken by her late husband, the one who was actually dying from an illness. This is a prime example of how the author uses irony to further emphasize Fedorovna’s narcissistic nature. Leo Tolstoy truly did a phenomenal work in shaping Fedorovna’s characteristics through her dialogue.

Melina Cabrera

Blog post 1

9/28/2017

Text: Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

” They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilych was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.” (2nd to the last paragraph of chapter 4)

Tolstoy characterizes Ivan Ilych as a man of a few friends, who is dedicated to his work more than he is to his family. Illych was a respectable man but after a while, both his colleagues and his family members neglected him. To his colleagues, he became a pushover whose job could possibly become available and to his family, a piggy bank with an ill temper. Ivan Ilych’s dedication to his work is what leads his coworkers to start viewing him as an opponent rather than a friend. This drove Ilych into a depression because he felt that he was no longer wanted in his workplace. Meanwhile, he was going through this mental transition his family was just as harsh as his pretentious workmates. His wife, Praskovya, blamed him for her unhappy life and like his daughter disregarded completely the doctor’s diagnosis of his illness. His wife even wished him dead. However, Ilych was the breadwinner so Praskovya thought to her self that she did not want to end up homeless. All of these negative treatments influenced Ivan Ilych’s perception of himself. In his mind, he was no longer a colleague, husband, or father, he was “poison.” In reality, Ivan Ilych is not the cause of the problems and the unhappiness of the people around him; those people are the causes of their own discomfort as well as Ilychs’ own. It is ironic how his family and acquaintances are the true toxins of the text, yet Ilych blames himself for things that are out of his control. His life is not “poison” just because others view him as such. Ilynch might not have been the best friend or family man but through Leo Tolstoy narration it is evident that he was a good person.

Please read Chapters 1-4 in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich for Thursday’s class.

Julien howard
Professor : Timothy Aubry
September 17, 2017

Blog Posting #1
Julien Howard
Reading Mary Shelly, Frankenstein, pp-61-108
Passages discussing Chapter 15 pg 91-93.

In this two page section of our reading I found these particular pages to be extra special. In these passages the narrator is giving us an in depth look into the mentality of the monster and the vulnerability of his true feelings toward his own existence. Frankenstein and the monster are both in a shack the monster possessed due to reason of his insecurity, his appearance. Was his creator God or the Devil. The root of his insecurities stem from the increase of his knowledge. The monster says my “increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. “ The more he learned of himself, the more despicable he found himself to be. Constantly fighting his inner demons, attempting to come to peace with his appearance.
The motive of his meeting with his creator is to leverage peace from human interaction. His biggest challenge was to be accepted. The monster craved acceptance but his appearance hindered his ability to adapt within society, his creator, and others to accept who he was. The monster desires companionship, someone like him that would accept him, leading to a fulfilled “normal humanistic life”. “Like Adam I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence“, he was missing his Eve to complete and accept him. He says “I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike the beings concerning whom I read, and to whose conversations I was a listener”
He wanted to be seen from his inward beauty and not condemned by his physical appearance . From his anthropological studies of human behavior, he craved what separated them from beast. Love, acceptance, family, and a place to to be himself without any judgement or wrath. Inevitably so, a place to be free. The monster wanted freedom..

“If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.”

This quote by Mary Shelley brings us deeper into the thinking that’s going on in Victors head. The idea of him saying we might be nearly free if our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire is his way of saying that we aren’t quite free at all. If we were free we wouldn’t let most things that we hear move us and that’s the interpretation that I have when he says “we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.”

The question I then begin to ask myself is is Victor free? Is he a slave to being moved from what he hears? The clear answer would then be no because most of his life has been lived being a contrarian going against popular belief and not sticking to the status quo. Victor was very ambitious at doing what he wanted when he wanted and not letting the influences of others effect him.

Possible theses:

Frankenstein explores the the advantages and disadvantages of rationality in relation to freedom.

Frankenstein demonstrates how that which often serves as the basis for freedom, i.e. rationality, can also paradoxically become a prison.

Frankenstein offers contradictory ideas of freedom, demonstrating how rationality, the necessary component for freedom, can lead to one’s imprisonment.

Frankenstein calls into question our conventional ideas of freedom, demonstrating that though we frequently use the term, we don’t truly understand what it means.

Ariela Baram

“The die is cast; I have consented to return, if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision: I come back ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess, to bear this injustice with patience.”

In the above passage, Robert Walton expresses his change of heart regarding exploration in this short letter to his sister Margaret. He gives in to the demands of his crew and decides to abandon his expedition. This change occurs not only because of the dire situation, but as a result of hearing Frankenstein’s story. Walton is presented with the extreme consequences of seeking knowledge and greatness. His desire of finding new land is no longer a priority, much to his dismay.

Walton learns from Frankenstein’s mistakes though he is displeased as is evident from him writing that his hopes are “blasted by cowardice and indecision”. After hearing of how Frankenstein lost everyone dear to him and how he has been chasing after the demon since the death of his wife, Walton is left realizing the value of life over becoming great. His pessimistic tone reflects the sadness he feels with giving up on his dream for the benefit of him and everyone else around him.

English 2850  First Paper

Choose a work of literature from the syllabus that you found particularly powerful or interesting. Explain what you see as the central purpose of the text. What idea or truth does it express or communicate?  Does it have any insights to offer about its own cultural context?  Does it have something to teach us, contemporary readers?  What sort of emotional effect is it trying to produce? Does the text allow you to view a particular issue in a new way? How does it do this? What kinds of strategies in terms of its style (its form, its images, its word choice) does it use in order to make an impact on its readers and get its idea across?

4-6 Pages, double-spaced.  Due October 10