The Death of Ivan Lynch

In The Death of Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy uses death to explore the question of what makes for a happy life. Ivan Ilych, the main character, has lived his whole life with the aim of enjoying himself: winning power at work, spending money, buying things to impress his friends, throwing parties, and playing bridge (his favorite thing of all). He seeks only what is pleasant, and deliberately avoids whatever is unpleasant. He has always done that in which society would perceive as the “right” thing. He married not for love, but rather because that was what he needed to do. All of his friends are basically the same way. Yet once Ivan falls ill and is faced with the prospect of dying, he realizes that while there is pain in his disease and death, the real pain comes from his attitude towards life that he has been unable to relinquish. His suffering brings him to recognize that his whole life has actually been a very unhappy one, though he didn 't know it. Before becoming sick, Ivan Ilych had willfully ignored his mortality, just like everyone around him. Once he realizes that he is actually dying, however, he no longer can. His suffering and his fear of death have the effect of completely cutting him off from the normal world around him. For his friends, colleagues, and family members, life goes on just as before. Ivan is dismayed to discover that none of them seems to understand or care about what he 's experiencing. He is left to face his fears and agonies alone, without comfort from anyone except a servant, the one person who pities him. The doctor comes to visit Ivan and does not reference his dying nor will any of his family or friends. When the doctor offers to ease his sufferings Ivan replies, “You can’t even do that. Let me be.” This further tells us that Ivan’s pain runs far deeper than that of his illness. One night while watching Gerasim sleep, he thought suddenly to himself, “What if my whole life has really been wrong?”
It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend. (11.12)
Ivan realizes at that moment that it’s possible that all of his life was false. His family life, friendships, his work life and everything he had pursued was false. He blames others as he was misled by his own social surroundings into living a false life.
Ivan’s wife convinces him to take communion hoping it will ease his pain and help him to feel better. He reluctantly agrees and his wife sends for a priest. Following the confession Ivan momentarily feels better and hopeful. When his wife asked, Ivan responded that he felt better.
Her dress, her figure, the expression of her face, the tone of her voice, all revealed the same thing. "This is wrong, it is not as it should be. All you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from you." And as soon as he admitted that thought, his hatred and his agonizing physical suffering again sprang up, and with that suffering a consciousness of the unavoidable, approaching end. And to this was added a new sensation of grinding shooting pain and a feeling of suffocation. (11.28)
The expression of his face when he uttered that "Yes" was dreadful. Having uttered it, he looked her straight in the eyes, turned on his face with a rapidity extraordinary in his weak state and shouted:(11.29)
"Go away! Go away and leave me alone!" (11.30)
Although Ivan had confessed his sins, he was still not at peace with his life or with the prospect of dying. In his final days his pain was excruciating and as the end came nearer, Ivan fought harder and screamed in pain until that moment when clarity struck. His son had come up and kissed his hand with a tear in his eye. At that moment he saw the light and began to feel sorry for not only his son but also for his wife. He tried to utter the words forgive me but could only muster “forgo”. At that moment he had forgone all the beliefs and attitudes that had prevented him from truly living his life as it was meant to live and the pain was gone. Ivan was as peace as he took his last breathes.

Works Cited
Tolstoy, Leo. “The Death of Ivan llych.” The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 7th ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 740-781. Print.

Cited: Tolstoy, Leo. “The Death of Ivan llych.” The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 7th ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 740-781. Print.