The Death of Ivan Ilyich

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Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, is arguably the most famous of his shorter works. Published in 1886, it was universally hailed as a masterpiece, a clear-eyed account of Society, societal deceit, family politics and of the almost universal compact among the wealthier classes to ignore the inevitability of death.

Ivan Ilyich is a successful judge, whose shallow existence revolves around comfort, status and propriety; his personal relationships are shallow, selfish and entirely materialistic. This smug, self-satisfied life is shattered when Ivan Ilyich falls ill and becomes progressively worse as time passes. His friends are embarrassed by his infirmity, spouting platitudes and false bonhomie, while his wife and daughter regard him as a nuisance, spoiling their pleasant social round. Only the stolid peasant boy Gerasim seems able to accept the progression of his disease as something natural, as part of life. As his painful condition worsens, the concept so long denied - Death - comes to take centre stage, and with it questions on how one’s life should be lived so that the dissolution of the body ceases to be a thing of horror.