Will you scratch by back? I think I have an Ilych!

Leo Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilych” is an unusual piece of literature in many ways. It begins with the ending; over half the novel is about the protagonists death, not his life; only one of the characters, Gerasim, is an exemplary person; and universal themes such as love and happiness are virtually absent. Yet my favorite part of the novella is the mastery with which Tolstoy depicts one’s life as foreshadowing one’s death. The protagonist and title character, Ivan Ilych, leads a shallow, artificial life. When he gets married, the speaker points out, “Ivan Ilych might have aspired to a more brilliant match, but even this was good. He had his salary, and she, he hoped, would have an equal income” (70). Ilych’s marriage is based on little more than money, and his wife demonstrates this too at his funeral when Peter Ivanovich realizes that “her chief concern with him—namely, to question him as to how she could obtain a grant of money from the government on the occasion of her husband’s death” (47). Ilych gets as little enjoyment out of his job as he does from his marriage, and each has the same motivation for him: money. When he gets promoted to examining magistrate, he feels that “everyone without exception, even the most important and self-satisfied, was in his power…” (65). When he is promoted again to Assistant Public Prosecutor, “His new duties, their importance, the possibility of indicting and imprisoning anyone he chose, the publicity his speeches received, and the success he had in all these things, made his work still more attractive” (79). Yet never does he take a job for the joy that it gives him, nor does he often show compassion towards his wife and his seldom-mentioned children. He has no “friends,” only “acquaintances.” And all of this is reflected in his death: just as monotonous, lonely, and tragic as his life. As he is dying, “He began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had seemed…all that had then seemed joys now melted before his sight and turned into something trivial and often nasty” (301). He realizes that his death is monotonous: the doctor comes, Ilych refuses to take the medication, his wife comes in to visit, Ilych kicks her out, Gerasim lends his body to rest Ilych’s legs, and Ilych finally realizes what kindness and happiness is, as it is reflected in Gerasim. He realizes, “’Just as the pain went on getting worse and worse, so my life grew worse and worse’” (313). Indeed, his life and death followed similar trajectories, both ending in much pain and sorrow.