The Death of Ivan Ilyich Themes

In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a novella detailing a wealthy man’s gradual death, Leo Tolstoy studies the human impulse to grasp for meaning in the face of mortality. As Ivan Ilyich succumbs to an ailment that is—at the time—mysterious and incurable, he begins to review his life, eventually concluding that he has wasted his energies focusing on his career and social status. To that end, he decides that nothing in life matters because…

In many ways, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a story about failures of empathy. As Ivan’s health deteriorates, his family members come to see him as a burden, viewing his illness as an impediment to their everyday happiness. Rather than genuinely caring for him, his wife Praskovya only checks in on him every once in a while, relying on expensive doctors and servants to do the real work of caring for him. As…

In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy uses Ivan’s decline to illustrate the uncomfortable fact that becoming ill often means involuntarily relinquishing control over one’s own life. Although Ivan has long enjoyed the privilege of fine-tuning his life by manipulating his power and influence in society, he now has to come to terms with the fact that he is at the mercy of his body and, to a certain extent, his caretakers. This…