Ivan Ilyich Materialism

Leo Tolstoy was born in Russia to an aristocratic family at a large estate known as Yasnaya Polyana. Nobility in his blood, Tolstoy grew up with unlimited resources. He knew of what it was like to have an over indulgence of unnecessary luxuries. This background is what made him perfectly fit to write a novel based entirely on the consequence of living one’s life without meaning. This is exactly what the work The Death of Ivan Ilyich conveyed. This work was centered around a man who pursued a boisterous career for the sake of glamour and recognition, a man who married a woman based on societal pressure, a man who was so infatuated with material objects that he lost sight of life’s true values. Through the various aspects of Ivan Ilyich’s life, Leo Tolstoy portrays how materialism inevitably leads to self-destruction. Founded on the basis of social
Campo was a doctor dealing with AIDS’ patients, while Ivan was a lawyer dealing with the accused and his own family. However, the result was the same thing. Campo thought of those patients as less of a person, and until he himself was faced with the possibility of having AIDS was toxic to his patients. Once his incident occurred, he made a turn for the best and treated everyone with the same respect. Ivan behaved in a similar manner. Only until he realized he would die soon enough did he choose to change. Unfortunately, it was a little bit too late. This is an interesting concept because while Campo is able to better himself, Ivan is not. Tolstoy in this conveys to his audience that chasing a life of materialistic design warrants only bad outcomes. Materialism had made Ivan so toxic that the only way to alleviate his suffering as well as his family’s suffering was to leave this planet. By ending the novel this way, Tolstoy places the ultimate exclamation mark. One that states that a life lived with no true meaning or value may serve the good of society by simply seeing its way