“Death is finished…It is no more”
There is something so captivating about Ivan Ilyich’s final though that i find it difficult to put into words. It questions our view on death. What is it? Is death actual death or is it something more than that? I get the sense from reading this story that it was a process. Ivan Ilyich’s demise wasn’t the culmination of his life, but a spiritual process.
As I was reading the story I felt as if Ivan’s death was being played out over the course of years. It was only near the end that you realize that Ivan’s demise has been occurring for 3 months. So why does Tolstoy feel the need to explicate his demise so thoroughly? What is it that Tolstoy is trying to get at that cannot be done with more brevity? Although I cannot fully answer these questions I think it is because dying is more important than death itself. It is in the process of dying that Ivan realizes that everything he strove for his entire life was worthless. This meaninglessness is best exemplified by the injury that led to his death in the first place. It was his vanity that led him to climb the step ladder to mount the drapes. As he is  dying we see Ivan slowly come to that realization. At first he can’t bring himself to believe it, and who would. There cannot be anything more painful for a person to come to the realization that his life was meaningless as they’re dying. That, in my opinion was the “real” death of Ivan Ilyich. The fact that he stopped breathing and his heart sopped beating was a formality.
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Tolstoy’s last passage of The Death of Ivan Ilyich caused me to rethink and reevaluate my view of death. Up until now, the dying process was one devoid of meaning-a state solely defined by its physical endurance and pain, a dying being. Yet, for me, Tolstoy adds an element of beauty to such a morbid idea. He infuses death with meaning, with a passion, and with a chance for one to evade the physical pain of death. He sheds light on the conscience a dying person posses, despite what is loved ones think of him. While Ivan’s family and doctors, watch him move on from this life, little do they know that Ivan is still “all here.” What strikes me about this passage is Ivan’s morale and intellect still present during his last few moments as a living being. Ivan acknowledges the pain and is aware of his future, but he is uncertain about death. Tolstoy raises the question of what is dying? Is it a process made up of physical and mental deterioration? Is it a time when all the pieces of one’s life come together, allowing the dying person to reminisce on his life? Does dying indeed finish when death strike and do the bells of death ever ring?
It is no surprise then that Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. His unconventional and provocative thoughts on death I’m sure shocked the people of his time. What I find interesting though are the hints to an “afterlife” at the end of the novella. Tolstoy asserts that “in place of death there was light.” To me, the light reminds me of an afterlife-of a better and more peaceful life to come, than the past one and even perhaps a heaven like state-all religious ideas.
Two things struck me in this short story:
1. The cold descriptions of Ivan’s family and coworkers and their thought process upon his death. Why did they not find compassion for the man rather than think immediately to the material implications of his death? That was emphasized a lot in the beginning and I think that at the end, Ivan links this material way of life to his death when he realizes that his death is a downhill journey that began long ago when he began to climb uphill in society’s ladder.
2. Why did Ivan not give a “last words” speech of morale for his son in those last moments? His son seemed like the most willing to hear his father’s words of advice, but Ivan continued to think of himself and of how he should die already to curb his family’s suffering in the short-term rather than teaching his son a lesson that would curb his suffering in the long-term so that he does not take that same journey downhill.
This story seemed like a wake-up call to all of us who walk around “dead” and just go through the motions, following a routine rather than our hearts. It seemed like a call to stop and smell the flowers, to enjoy life moment by moment. Ivan seemed like the profile of an “ideal” man, with a great job, family, and lifestyle, but he was not truly “living” spiritually, mentally, and emotionally, and he did not come to this realization until he started dying physically.
This contrast is very interesting. You don’t know what you’ve got until you loose it. I still don’t think that Ivan learned his life lesson, however, because the perfect ending would have been if he would have shared his revelation with his son, to help him avoid falling into the “life” that brings inner death.
This story reminded me of Bartleby the Scrivener who also seemed to have been slowly dying. However, his death did not so much come from physical ailment but from emotional ailment, lacking the motivation or the will to do anything anymore. Both of these characters found that the worth and value of life was escaping from their grasp as they let death take its toll.