Comparing The Daodejing And The Death Of Ivan Ilych

Ancient texts and modern day texts share many themes in common with each other. These texts both use stories as a way to tell the reader something important that the author feels to be important. Each text may be from different time periods where life is different from one another but they still have a commonality between each other. Their themes are the subject that connects them together through the years. The theme that is appearing is “the good life.” It appears specifically in two texts such as The Daodejing and The Death of Ivan Ilych. These two texts express in their writing about how it is better to live a good life without any excess of anything. These texts have a similarity, they wish to show the reader that it is better to live
The Death of Ivan Ilych is more about being simple and not trying to be something that you are not (economically). Economically, it looked like the Ilych family had money but that they were from a working family based on page 115 saying “Things went particularly well at first, before everything was finally arranged and while something had still to be done: this thing bought, that thing ordered, another thing moved, and something else adjusted (Tolstoy).” This was how that family decided to change themselves to look richer than were in real life. By having to change the way they lived to keep up with this lifestyle. It took a toll on Ivan and he began to get sick from page 118, “And his irritability became worse and worse and began to mar the agreeable, easy, and correct life…and soon the ease and amenity disappeared and even the decorum was barely maintained (Tolstoy).” With the décor slowly started to be less maintained, it only showed the other families with money that the Ilych family were not rich. This caused Ivan to realize that the change wasn’t good but instead it hindered them. Having this difference from The Daodejing on shows that the texts may have the same main theme but different interpretations of that