The Death of Ivan Ilych

"The Death of Ivan Ilych" is a novella written by Leo Tolstoy and published in 1886. The novella is considered one of his masterpieces and was written shortly after his religious conversion in the 1870's. The story in the novella is that of a man named Ivan Ilych, who lives an unremarkable, average life, slowly climbing the ranks of society as a judge until he eventually becomes a wealthy man.

Ivan marries a woman from a good family whom he eventually ends up disliking intensely, but the two have several children together. When Ivan is decorating a new house, he falls wrong on a window sill one day and receives a bruise on his side. After this, Ivan is plagued with health issues that eventually lead to his death.

The novella explores the thoughts of Ivan in the months before he dies. He comes to feel that he has lived his life badly and questions the meaning of life and death and the reason for his pain and suffering. In the end, he realizes that his life can still be fixed and dies surrounded by his family with a satisfied look on his face. Several films have been made of the movie in Russia, including one in 1952, 1985 and 2000.

Book Summary

A group of judges gather in a private room and begin talking about cases. The small talk ends when a man named Peter Ivanovich enters and tells them that Ivan Ilych has died. Peter was Ivan's closest friend. Although the men in the room liked and respected Ivan, being judges their first thought is what promotions and shake-ups might occur because of the death. Even Peter begins to wonder if he should apply for his brother-in-law to be transferred from a country town.

The solemn moment caused by the announcement fades quickly and the narrator reveals that the men are mostly relieved that they are not the one who is dead. Peter goes to Ivan's house to see the body. He is not sure how to act when he approaches the room with the coffin inside, wondering if he should cross himself or bow. He settles on a middle ground between the two and enters the room and looks at Ivan's body. He thinks that Ivan's face has an accomplished expression as if he died feeling fulfilled.

Peter is so unsettled by the body that he rushes out of the room. In the next room, Schwartz, a jovial work colleague talks to him about a game of bridge. Ivan's widow, Praskovya enters and asks to speak with Peter privately. She brings him to a drawing room but before they can speak, Praskovya accidentally catches her shawl on the corner of a desk and begins to weep. The butler enters the room to tell her the price of the cemetery plot for Ivan and she inquires whether there is a less expensive one, since the price of 220 rubles is too much for her. Praskovya turns back to Peter and begins to talk about Ivan's death. She tells him that, for the last three days before he died, Ivan screamed constantly and it was very difficult for her. Peter is horrified by the thought of his friend suffering but the idea that it was not him that died again comforts him. Praskovya addresses the real reason she pulled Peter aside. She wants to know if she can get more money from the government for Ivan's death.

When Peter is not able to come up with any suggestions, Praskovya dismisses him. When Peter leaves the room, he sees Ivan's son sitting under the stairs. Peter attends the funeral and is one of the first people to leave after it is over. Before he leaves, Ivan's former nurse, Gerasim helps him with his coat. Gerasim reminds him that death is God's will and it will come to everyone one day. When Peter leaves, the cool air refreshes him. He decides to meet Schwartz for a game of bridge.

At the beginning of a chapter, the narrative shifts to 30 years earlier and talks about the birth and childhood of Ivan. The narrator describes Ivan as a perfectly normal, unexceptional man. His life is so simply and ordinary that it is "most terrible".  Ivan is the son of a "superfluous" member of  government institutions and the middle child of three. When he is thirteen, Ivan enrolls in the School of Law. He is a good student but not an exceptional one. He is drawn to people of high social standing and tends to try to imitate and assimilate their actions. After graduating, Ivan purchases a medallion with the words "respice finem" or "look to the end" inscribed on it. He achieves a job position as an official for the provincial governor.

Ivan moves to a new province after five years at this position. As a result of the Russian governmental reforms of the 1860's, he receives a promotion as examining magistrate in a judicial institution in another province. Ivan is a fair and sound judge, keeping his personal feelings out of his work and performing his task to the letter. He creates a social circle of coworkers and begins playing a form of a bridge called "vint" with them regularly. After living in the new province for two years, he meets a woman named Praskovya Fedorovna who is from a good family and has a little bit of property.

Although Ivan is not necessarily in love with Praskovya, he marries her because his superiors tell him it is a good decision. At first, Ivan and Praskovya's marriage goes along nicely. They get along and life is relatively easy. But soon, she becomes pregnant and something "unpleasant, depressing and unseemly" comes out in her personality. Praskovya becomes demanding and moody. Ivan begins to regret marrying her. He puts more and more of his free time into his work and spends only his time sleeping at home.

After another year, Ivan is promoted again to Assistant Public Prosecutor. Four years after this, he is transferred to another province again as Public Prosecutor. Seven more years pass with Ivan spending as little time home as possible and avoiding his wife. They have more children, but one dies young. Seventeen years pass with Ivan in his role as Public Prosecutor. He is well respected and in high standing in his field. Ivan waits for a promotion as the presiding judge in a University town but he is passed over for this and becomes angry. Ivan takes a leave of absence after arguing with the man who did get the promotion. He moves out to the country with his family, into a home owned by his brother-in-law. Before long, Ivan hears about a position opening up in the Ministry of Justice. A friend of his has been promoted

Ivan's widow, Praskovya enters and asks to speak with Peter privately. She brings him to a drawing room but before they can speak, Praskovya accidentally catches her shawl on the corner of a desk and begins to weep. The butler enters the room to tell her the price of the cemetery plot for Ivan and she inquires whether there is a less expensive one, since the price of 220 rubles is too much for her.

Praskovya turns back to Peter and begins to talk about Ivan's death. She tells him that, for the last three days before he died, Ivan screamed constantly and it was very difficult for her. Peter is horrified by the thought of his friend suffering but the idea that it was not him that died again comforts him. Praskovya addresses the real reason she pulled Peter aside. She wants to know if she can get more money from the government for Ivan's death. When Peter is not able to come up with any suggestions, Praskovya dismisses him. When Peter leaves the room, he sees Ivan's son sitting under the stairs.

Peter attends the funeral and is one of the first people to leave after it is over. Before he leaves, Ivan's former nurse, Gerasim helps him with his coat. Gerasim reminds him that death is God's will and it will come to everyone one day. When Peter leaves, the cool air refreshes him. He decides to meet Schwartz for a game of bridge. At the beginning of a chapter, the narrative shifts to 30 years earlier and talks about the birth and childhood of Ivan. The narrator describes Ivan as a perfectly normal, unexceptional man. His life is so simply and ordinary that it is "most terrible".

Ivan is the son of a "superfluous" member of  government institutions and the middle child of three. When he is thirteen, Ivan enrolls in the School of Law. He is a good student but not an exceptional one. He is drawn to people of high social standing and tends to try to imitate and assimilate their actions. After graduating, Ivan purchases a medallion with the words 'respice finem' or "look to the end" inscribed on it. He achieves a job position as an official for the provincial governor. Ivan moves to a new province after five years at this position. As a result of the Russian governmental reforms of the 1860's, he receives a promotion as examining magistrate in a judicial institution in another province. Ivan is a fair and sound judge, keeping his personal feelings out of his work and performing his task to the letter. He creates a social circle of coworkers and begins playing a form of bridge called "vint" with them regularly. After living in the new province for two years, he meets a woman named Praskovya Fedorovna who is from a good family and has a little bit of property.

Although Ivan is not necessarily in love with Praskovya, he marries her because his superiors tell him it is a good decision. At first, Ivan and Praskovya's marriage goes along nicely. They get along and life is relatively easy. But soon, she becomes pregnant and something "unpleasant, depressing and unseemly" comes out in her personality.

Praskovya becomes demanding and moody. Ivan begins to regret marrying her. He puts more and more of his free time into his work and spends only his time sleeping at home. After another year, Ivan is promoted again to Assistant Public Prosecutor. Four years after this, he has transferred to another province again as Public Prosecutor. Seven more years pass with Ivan spending as little time home as possible and avoiding his wife. They have more children, but one dies young. Seventeen years pass with Ivan in his role as Public Prosecutor. He is well respected and in high standing in his field. Ivan waits for a promotion as the presiding judge in a University town but he is passed over for this and becomes angry. Ivan takes a leave of absence after arguing with the man who did get the promotion. He moves out to the country with his family, into a home owned by his brother-in-law.

Before long, Ivan hears about a position opening up in the Ministry of Justice. A friend of his has been promoted to a high position and this friend hires him into the Department of Justice into a higher paying position than his old job. Ivan is delighted by the news and moves his family to St. Petersburg, finding a house that he can decorate to look like the home of an aristocrat. However, one day as he is climbing a step ladder to hang some drapes in his new home, he takes a wrong step and falls against a window sill, hurting his side. A bruise forms, but soon heals. Ivan is thrilled by the state of his house once it is finished and feels like he is finally where he wants to be in life. Ivan and Praskovya's relationship improves, and they regularly hold dinner parties for official, high-ranking friends. Ivan's grown children begin courting and becoming engaged and his life goes along pleasantly.

But soon, Ivan begins experiencing pain in his side where he hurt it against the window sill. He also has an odd taste in his mouth. The pain becomes regular and changes Ivan's mood, making him begin to have an angrier personality. His relationship with his wife begins to suffer again, as she cannot stand his ill temper. Ivan goes to see the doctor about the pain in his side, but the doctor brushes off his worries, assuming that he only has appendicitis. Ivan is upset that the doctor would treat him this way and realizes that this is how he treats criminals in his court. After more tests, the doctor realizes that his initial diagnosis was inaccurate. Ivan sees more doctors but each one diagnoses him differently. His wife and daughter become annoyed at his depression and illness and Ivan realizes that no one else is taking his illness seriously. Praskovya assumes that the illness is his own fault and that if he was more careful in following the doctor's orders he would feel better.

At work, Ivan thinks that his coworkers are wondering if his position will soon be vacant. The others, like Schwartz, joke with him about his illness as if it were temporary. Ivan begins caring less and less about things that he used to love, like playing cards. He feels that his life is "poisoned" and that he is poisoning the lives of those around him. One day, Ivan arrives home to find his brother-in-law is moving into his house. His brother-in-law's surprise at his condition tells Ivan that he looks iller than even he had thought. He takes a portrait of himself and compares it to a mirror and is frightened to find that his face has changed so much. He overhears a conversation between Praskovya and her brother in which he is referred to as the "dead man".

Ivan begins to realize that his problem is not a question of illness or wellness but a question of life or death. The thought terrifies him and he falls onto his bed, cursing in despair. Praskovya hears the noise and checks on him, kissing his forehead. Ivan is barely able to suppress his hatred of her. Ivan struggles with the idea of his own mortality. He feels that if he is dying, he should know it from his inner voice. He remembers childhood memories such as kissing his mother's hand and the smell of his leather ball. He attempts to create "screens" in his mind to shield himself from the thought of his death but the thought manages to crawl through them. One day he thinks that he sees Death itself looking at him from across his drawing room. Ivan realizes that he is already, essentially dead and that only his body continues on. He receives injections of morphine for the pain but they do not help. He loses control of his bodily functions and can barely eat.

However, the servant, Gerasim is assigned to nurse him and Ivan finds some comfort in the man who is not only young and strong but kind. One day, Ivan realizes that his pain is somewhat relieved when Gerasim holds his feet aloft. After this, Ivan asks Gerasim to hold his feet on his shoulders regularly and Gerasim agrees willingly. The other people around Ivan insist on keeping up the pretense that he is only ill and not dying and Ivan finds this offensive. He continues to assume that no one understands how much pain he is in. He longs to be pitied and comforted and only Gerasim provides Ivan with any support.

Sometimes, Gerasim holds Ivan's legs all night. He tells Ivan "We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble." He considers his work a service to a dying man and not a burden. Ivan realizes that he is only comforted by Gerasim. Ivan begins to lose track of the days and nights, everything becomes a miasma of pain and discomfort for him. He can only mark the passing of time because he knows that it is morning when Gerasim leaves to have breakfast. He does not believe that his medicine is helping him, but takes it anyway because he wishes to have people around him. Ivan begins to have trouble recognizing the servants and people around him. Praskovya tells him that she has sent to a specialist and tells Ivan that she is doing it for her own sake so that he cannot refuse. Ivan is surprised that she assumes that he will think it is for his sake, as he thinks that she does everything for her own sake.

The specialist gives Ivan an injection that makes him sleep one day away. After he wakes, Praskovya comes into the room, dressed well and reminds him that she and the children are going to the theater. Ivan's daughter and her fiance come in and Vasya, Ivan's young son sneaks in as well. Vasya is scared of his father's illness, and Ivan appreciates his fear as he thinks that it means that the boy realizes that his father is indeed dying. The conversation with his family is awkward as none of them want to talk about his illness. When they leave, the false feeling leaves with them, and Ivan is relieved.

That night, Ivan dreams that he is being pushed into a black sack but although he is being pushed further and further in, he cannot reach the bottom. He both desires and fears hitting the bottom. Suddenly he breaks through the sack and wakes up. When Ivan wakes, he begins weeping and crying out to God. When he quiets, he hears a voice that seems to be speaking from within his soul, asking him what it is that he wants. Ivan says that he wants to live and live well like he did before. However, when he begins to remember his former life the best moments seem trivial and occasionally mean and nasty. Looking back on his life, he thinks that the farther he got away from his childhood, the more unsatisfactory his life became. He feels that as he moved higher and higher in society, life was moving away from him.

Ivan thinks that he hasn't lived his life the way that he should have for a moment before remembering that he did everything "properly" and that that is all that matters. After another week and a half, Ivan becomes to weak to leave his sofa. All he can do is think about his inevitable death. Hope moves further away as the illness grows worse. He only wants to understand the purpose of his current suffering and what his life has been for. Ivan's relationship with his wife only grows worse as his health deteriorates. One morning, Praskovya attempts to tell him that their daughter has gotten engaged, but seeing how ill he is, she instead tells him to take his medicine. Ivan hisses at his wife to let him die in peace.

The doctor arrives and Ivan treats him with hostilely as well. The doctor tells Praskovya that he cannot treat Ivan and that he can only make him comfortable as his condition is fatal. Ivan's physical sufferings take second place to his mental torture, however as he finally begins to admit to himself that he has not lived his life correctly and that the only time he felt whole was when he was struggling against the bonds of high society. He feels that his life "was not real at all, but a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death." He feels that he has treated his family poorly. Praskovya insists that he take communion and Ivan agrees, the process giving him some relief. Ivan begins screaming for the last few days. He realizes that he is still struggling against the black sack and feels that he is headed to an executioner.

The ability to enter the black sack gets easier as he begins to realize that his life has not been a good one. At the end of his last day, he feels as if a "force" strikes him in the chest and side and pushes him through the sack and into a bright light. Ivan says it feels like being in a railway car that you assume is moving forward, but that you suddenly realize is, in fact moving backward. Ivan's son, Vasya approaches him and Vasya begins to cry as his father's hand falls on his head. In the bright light, Ivan feels that he sees that even though his life has not been good, it can still be put right. He asks himself what is right. He sees his family and feels bad for them and that their lives will be better when he dies. He wants to say this to them, but lacks the strength to speak. He gestures to his wife to take Vasya away and tries to ask her to forgive him but only manages to say "Forego."

Ivan realizes that all he can do is act to free his family from suffering. He also wants to free himself from pain. As he thinks this, his fear falls from "two sides, from ten sides, and from all sides." He doesn't fear death any longer and he realizes that this is because he is finished with death. Instead of death now, there is only a light and Ivan is overjoyed. For everyone else in the room, his death lasts for two hours but for him the experience happens in an instant. He sighs and then stretches out and dies.

Characters Analysis 

Ivan Ilych - The protagonist of the novel. Ivan is an elderly man who spends much of the book reviewing his life as he is dying. From birth, Ivan is portrayed as an average, everyday man who is a good student and a good judge. He begins working tirelessly at his job only to avoid being home. Ivan marries a respectable woman because his superiors tell him to and because he thinks that it is the "proper" thing to do. He lives his whole life only according to what is proper and what will advance his place in social society. At the end of his life, Ivan realizes that he feels he lived his life badly. His last months and days are a crisis of self-doubt and fear as well as tremendous pain. In the end, Ivan comes to the realization that his life can still be fixed and dies with a satisfied expression on his face.

Praskovya Fedorovna - Ivan's wife. Praskovya marries Ivan when she is a young woman who comes from a good family and has some land. Initially, her relationship with him is good but after she becomes pregnant with their first child, Ivan feels that her personality changes and she becomes irritable and mean. The marriage between the two sours permanently, although they continue to stay married and have more children. Praskovya does not like her husband but still appears to love and pity him on some level. In the end, she is by his side when he dies.

Gerasim - Ivan's servant and nurse. Gerasim is a young, energetic man who tends to Ivan readily and kindly. He confesses that he does not feel burdened by the tasks that he has to attend to in Ivan's last days and instead views it as respect for the dying. Gerasim has a fatalistic view of death. He sees it as something that we will all have to endure and something that should not be troubled over until your time comes. Ivan feels that Gerasim is the only person in his last days that understands and respects him enough to talk honestly about his condition.

Leo Tolstoy Biography 

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist born in 1828. A profound social and moral thinker, Tolstoy was one of the greatest writers of realistic fiction during his time. The son of a nobleman landowner, Tolstoy was orphaned at the age of 9 and educated by French and German tutors. At the age of 16, he enrolled in Kazan University but quickly became dissatisfied with his studies and dropped out soon after.

After a brief, futile attempt to improve the conditions of the serfs on his estate, he plunged into the dissipations of Moscow's high society.

In 1851, Tolstoy joined his brother's regiment in the Caucasus, where he came into contact with Cossacks. He later portrayed the natural cossacks life with sympathy and poetic realism in his novel "The Cossacks", published in 1863. Tolstoy completed two autobiographical novels during his time in the regiment and the works received instant acclaim.

Back in Saint Petersburg (now Leningrad) Tolstoy became interested in the education of peasants and started a local elementary school that fostered progressive education. In 1862 he married 18-year-old Sofya Andreyevna Bers, a member of a cultured Moscow family. In the next 15 years, he raised a large family, ultimately having 19 children. During this time he also managed his estate and wrote his two most famous novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877).

In the uniquely candid powerful novel Confession, Tolstoy described his growing spiritual turmoil, castigated himself and his class for leading a selfish, empty existence, and started his long quest for moral and social certitudes. He found them in two principals of the Christian gospels: love for all human beings and nonresistance to the forces of evil.

From within autocratic Russia, Tolstoy fearlessly attacked social inequality and coercive forms of government and church authority. His didactic essays, translated into many different languages, won hearts in many countries and from all walks of life, many of whom visited him in Russia seeking advice.

At the age of 82, increasingly tormented by the disparity between his teachings, his personal wealth and by endless fights with his wife, Tolstoy left his home one night. He fell ill three days later and died on November 20, 1910, at a remote railway station.

At his death, he was hailed as a uniquely powerful moral force throughout the world. That force and his timeless and universal art continue to provide inspiration today.