Pitying Ivan Ilych

Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych recounts the impending death and fruitless life of Ivan Ilych. Consumed by the materialistic values of his upper-mid class Russian society, Ilych appears to have all—a wife, two children, a new home, and high paying position. Yet Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych sheds light on the falsity of meaning in Ilych’s life in hopes of exposing Ilych’s self-centered decisions. Yet Ronald Blythe’s assertion that even though Tolstoy condemns “Ivan Ilych’s opportunism, marriage of convenience, vanity, and limitation, an then with astonishment, the reader finds himself beginning to like this conventional man and to be sorry when he starts to lose out to death” holds true as Tolstoy paints a picture of the society’s ideal of self promotion.

Tolstoy makes a point of depicting the societies’ reactions to Ivan Ilych’s death and decaying—a point that helps bring the reader to feel sorry of Ilych. At his death, Ilych’s friends and even his wife are burdened by his funeral. On the arrival of the news of Ilych’s death Peter Ivanovich, Ilych’s best friend, tries only to map out the position he will inherent since Ilych’s seat now stands open. Likewise, Peter becomes upset when he must speak to Ilych’s wife, Praskovya Fedorovna, over playing bridge with all Ivan’s other friends. The indifference towards Ivan’s death evokes a sense of sympathy towards Ivan that is even more greatly fostered by Praskovya’s reaction to her husband’s death. Praskovya masks herself in a façade of a grieving widow in order to extract information on financial dealings. Ilych’s society’s promotion of oneself’s well being and societal status keeps his counterparts from empathizing with his death from lack of deep meaningful connections. (For example, Ilych and his wife married simply due to the similarity of their societal backgrounds.)

Much of the pity that readers develop for Ivan Ilych also lies in Ilych’s realization that his life was in fact meaningless. Plagued with superficiality, Ilych simply recalls his childhood memories as the ones that mattered demonstrating the insignificance of his more present life as an adult. Ilych even begins to characterize his life as “worthless and doubtful” as his final hours draw near. Yet as Ilych realizes his life’s insignificance, he begins to fade more deeply towards death, impeding him from living a life filled with compassionate relationships.

Despite Ilych’s life of self-centered thinking, Tolstoy depicts all of society sharing his myopic view. As Ilych comes to the realization that his life was worthless due to his thinking and materialistic outlook, the reader begins to pity him as he suffers through the pain of his oncoming death.