In The Death of Ivan Ilych, the title character is a middle-aged judge who lives in Russia in the 19th century. A person of high social standing, he has a very good life, though he and his wife do not get along by any means. One day, after hurting himself putting up curtains in his decadent new apartment, he starts feeling ill, and soon it becomes evident that he is dying of whatever vague illness has befallen him. With this senseless new information, Ivan Ilych starts to examine his own purpose in life, and whether he has lived life to the fullest. Ivan's journey reflects Man's Search for Meaning, as he starts to look as his life and deeds in the context of what he is leaving behind.
Ivan as a character is the summation of a member of the upper class who spends his life dedicated to materialism and consumerism. Tolstoy describes him as "neither as cold and formal as his elder brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy mean between them - an intelligent, polished, lively and agreeable man" (Tolstoy, p. 794). Ivan himself, at the beginning of the book, is incredibly satisfied with his life thus far - he has spent it climbing up the social ladder, becoming a man of prestige and power. His life is carefree, "most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible" (Tolstoy, Ch. 2). With this quote, Tolstoy wants to impart some information about Ivan's life that even he does not know. For the most part, a simple life is often celebrated; it means you do not overstep your bounds, and you do not overcomplicate your life with things that will end up disappointing you. However, in the case of Ivan in particular, this means that his life is terribly boring, as he just conforms to whatever society tells him he needs to be. Whether he is a member of the social elite, a married man, or a materialist, he simply enjoys the things he is told to enjoy by the rest of society, forging no identity of his own. Those he looks up to - who are above him in social standing - set the trends that he tries to follow, both in what he wants and what he does. Since he is not using his own set of morals and personal convictions to dictate his own opinions and behavior, he is not living life to the fullest. His life, therefore, is terrible, and barely worth considering a life - he has no agency and no desire to make something for himself that isn't decided beforehand by others.
Ivan Ilych's marriage to his wife, Praskovya, is unsatisfying and overly demanding. Praskovya as a character is completely unsympathetic, as she does not care for Ivan one bit unless it benefits her on a personal level. She is completely self-absorbed, as both Ivan and Praskovya are not married as a consequence of their love for each other; instead, Ivan married her because he needs to be married in order to fulfill societal pressures and Praskovya wants a rich husband. She makes Ivan's personal and home life absolutely unbearable, which is why he dedicates so much time to the pursuit of his career. Both of these characters are lost in the expectations of society, as they are forced to be in each others' presence by circumstances and roles not of their making.
Between his wife and his materialistic life, Ivan does not quite realize how unhappy he is; rather, he knows he is unhappy, but does not know why. After all, he is doing everything right. Then, one day, when putting up curtains in his new home, he falls in a strange position. He lands on his side, and it hurts a bit. This injury is brushed off immediately afterward, but he starts to feel more and more intense pain on his side that he simply cannot explain. He soon finds out that he is dying - of what, and how soon, the doctors do not know. There are rumblings of floating kidneys and blind gut, but no one can pinpoint the actual cause. This also makes it impossible to treat. Tolstoy, in making the illness intentionally vague but fatal, further hammers home the helplessness of mortality that he wants Ivan to feel. There is no way he can treat the condition because he doesn't know what it is - much like we do not know how we are going to die.
Ivan, as his horror and fear grows at the prospect of death, has a difficult time quantifying or understanding his impending demise. He says to himself, "I have been here. Now I am going there. Where?No, I won't have it!" He is supremely confused by the concept, mostly because he feels he does not deserve death. To Ivan, he has lived the "right" life - he did everything that was expected of him and no less. He succeeded at his work, he got married, he had a son, he got a nice home - what more could be expected? He was a good man, according to what he was told was good; he followed the rules, so he should not have to die. Dying is for those who lose out o life, not for a straight shooter like Ivan. "'Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,' it suddenly occurred to him. 'But how could that be, when I did everything properly?' he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible" (Tolstoy, Ch. 9). This sort of mental confusion comes from him believing in the "just world," thinking that everything happens for a reason and that no harm will befall you if you have done nothing wrong (Frankl, 1959). However, since he did not live for himself, and instead lived according to what others expected of him, he never really lived at all.
Tolstoy uses Ivan's journey and anguish to show the different kinds of lives there are. First, there is the artificial life, which Ivan is the prime example of. Relationships are shallow and happen out of the expectation of social advantage - people get together because they think it will get them ahead in life. Material goods are the primary motivation for people to act, to make money, to work - not the value or the satisfaction of the work itself. This kind of life does not provide supreme or real fulfillment to people's lives; it just leaves them empty and with many questions about the ultimate significance of life. When death comes for those people, it is feared - they never believe that they have lived long enough or deserved this fate, and so they miss out on a good life. This is the type of life that Tolstoy discourages, as it does not offer ultimate meaning or comfort to people.
However, Tolstoy (and Ivan at the end) seems to celebrate the authentic life - one filled with meaning and separated from the chase for material wealth and social status. When someone lives an authentic life, one lives for others, is spiritually whole, and not afraid that what he has done is wrong. In the book, this is exemplified by Gerasim, who is Ivan's young butler. Throughout the later stages of Ivan's illness, he is the only one to continually treat Ivan with respect, even as everyone else around him (his wife, his daughter, his doctors) all pull away from him. While everyone else abandons Ivan for inconveniencing their lives, Gerasim stays by his side, sharing his pain and holding Ivan's legs when it is needed. Gerasim's fulfillment comes from his doing unto others, and he learns from Ivan's pain just as Ivan learns from him. Gerasim's boldness and strength of character move Ivan greatly, and he realizes that compassion and kindness trump self-interest when it comes to having meaning in life.
Once Ivan realizes this, he starts to come to terms with his impending death, and begins to understand the need for an authentic life. He stops hating his wife and daughter, and instead pities them for thinking the same way he did - ideally, he wishes that they would find better lives and better reasons to live them once he is gone. Ivan is "done for, there was no way back, the end was here, the absolute end" Then, "some force" strikes him, and he symbolically passes on this knowledge and wisdom to his son, who is the only member of the family to show him any compassion besides Gerasim. "His hand fell on the boy's head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to cry" (Tolstoy, Ch. 12).
In conclusion, The Death of Ivan Ilych, in allowing a materialistic character who lived an inauthentic life of social pressure and materialism to recognize the error of his ways and embrace his own death, shows the need for compassion and kindness in one's life to bring meaning to it. Tolstoy demonizes those who live their lives for things and status; that does not bring ultimate fulfillment to them. Instead, through the character of Gerasim, Ivan learns that self-sacrifice and helping others is the only way to spiritually improve oneself. Man's search for meaning within this book involves someone finding out, far too late, that living for selfish reasons and not caring about others does not make you truly happy, or wash away regret at the moment of your death. The only thing that can do that is to be truly yourself, and to not cave in to what others think your life should be.
Works Cited
Frankl, V. Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press 1959. Print.
Jahn, Gary R. Tolstoy's the Death of Ivan Ilʹich: A Critical Companion. Northwestern University
Press, 1999. Print.
Tolstoy, L. The Death of Ivan Ilych. 1886. Print.
Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich. The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters:
Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. pp. 794–833.
