“The Death of Ivan Ilyich” Reading Response – Hailey Egan

Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilych in a classic among readers everywhere. Ivan is one of the sons in the story who is a quite distant from him family in the story because he is more focused on work. He eventually ends up taking another job because the salary is much higher than the one he is presently making, and he ends up suffering from a injury at work which didn’t seem bad at first but sickness soon followed and the doctors weren’t sure what exactly was causing his illness. As he gets sicker and sicker, he starts to question what was really important in his life because he believes everyone is acting “artificial” and not acknowledging that he is most likely going to die from this sickness and his family and everyone is being ignorant to it. Ivan ends up dying and as he’s thinking back on his life, he realizes that all of his relationships with friends and family and realizes they were all fake in a sense. All throughout his life, he was more concerned about work and success than what was actually important.

With everything that’s going on in the world at this moment in time, I think this reading was, in a sense, an eye opener. Before this pandemic happened, life was normal and most of us, especially living in New York City, were always in a rush. Tolstoy’s writing gave me a new perspective on how sometimes we need to just slow down and enjoy what’s right in front of us. I, myself, think about the possibility of death coming often because I enjoy life and am afraid to die. A lot of times though, I’ll prioritize things that shouldn’t be. There’s many times where instead of spending time with my family I decided to go out, and I think this reading made me realize I don’t want to one day regret picking something small over what was truly important to me.

This time period is strange and as much as I miss “normal” life, it gave me a new perspective on life and the way I have been living. Two family members of mine had COVID-19, which was scary. Luckily, they’re okay now but it made me realize how I need to not take things for granted and slow down because life isn’t a rush and we should appreciate the smaller things. Despite the brutality of this pandemic and the lives that were lost, I think it was a wake up call for a lot of people maybe that we should appreciate the smaller things in life too and make more time for the people we love and care about because they wont always be around. I’m happy that I got to encounter this reading at this time because it made me realize a lot and I feel much more appreciative of what I have now.