My Ideas Of Words

Death seems to be a rather dark topic to discuss today; it is somewhat taboo to bring up, and it makes sense because it’s painful and unexpected. because it leads to a force that brings the end of your life. Death is scary because it’s painful and unexpected, leading people to shy away from it. But at the same time, it is all part of human nature and an event that will surely come to all of us. Now that brings us to the novella at hand. The novella that depicts the theme of death in a beautiful yet brutal fashion and that’s non other than The Death of Ivan Ilyich by the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich, published in 1886, is a story about a man called Ivan Ilyich who one day suffers from an accident and is soon diagnosed with a terminal illness. The illness leads to him confronting his death and the overall meaning of life. Leo Tolstoy does so well by showing Ivan’s struggle with his demise. At first, Ivan refuses to believe the Illness but later gives up the fight, accepts that death is near, and embraces it at the end. We see the suffering and turmoil Ivan goes through in this story as he is soon trapped with loneliness and, later on, becomes isolated amongst his family. His relationship with his wife grows more stale as time goes by, with the wife also struggling with the pain of his illness. All these events lead to Ivan Ilyich fall into depression and constant worry knowing his life is coming to a close. Through all these events, Ivan comes out in the end with total acceptance as he soon confronts his mortality and ultimately welcomes his end.

Leo Tolstoy’s main message in this Novella is that, eventually, we have to confront our own mortality and see death as a way to not only beware of our time on earth but to live life with purpose and meaning. Ivan when he was slowly dying he started to analyse his life and the choices that he made along the way making him question his actions. He started to question his relationships, his job and his purpose in life knowing that its too late to change those things in the future. Confronting your mortality now is hard to do but for us to live accordingly and to thrive in this realm called life we have to face it and use it as motivation to make better decisions and to live fully.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a great novella that I recommend everyone read. It is definitely a classic, not just in Russian literature but in literature as a whole, and Tolstoy definitely shows why he is one of the most gifted writers in history.