Review of the book “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Lev Tolstoy.
By Ander Terrones Arellano.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a short novel by the acclaimed Russian author of the second half of the 19th century, Lev Tolstoy. In less than 100 pages we can see the slow deterioration that leads a relatively successful man to suffer unspeakable suffering in the last months of his life.
One of the most remarkable things about the work is the uncertainty that Ivan Ilyich faces, since he suspects that he has something serious even though the doctors do not specify his illness. In this relationship with the medical establishment The Death of Ivan Ilyich It has a certain resemblance to the movie Live by Akira Kurosawa. But unlike in the Japanese director’s film, Ilich, who is also a civil servant like the main character in the film, does not seek achievements in the face of death or to be remembered for doing good. The protagonist of this novel only wants his suffering to end and not to die, something that his slow decline eventually makes impossible.
The main theme is death, as the title of the book suggests, and how human beings face their end. There is no religiousness here that makes Ivan Ilyich find a faith that calms him. Death is the end of the road and the protagonist makes a disastrous assessment of his life journey. Through a desire to progress, all his choices have been made with the aim of getting further up the social ladder, without thinking about whether that was really what he wanted.
Thus, the life he has created around himself, with his wife and children, as well as his work colleagues, ends up being rejected by Ilich, and in the last moments of his life he wants to be alone, reflecting and without being interrupted or disturbed by those who are supposed to be his loved ones.
In just a few dozen pages, Tolstoy constructs a universal story that can be abstracted from the specific life of Ivan Ilyich. What he deals with is the fact of death and how human beings must face an inevitable future. The question underlying the character’s reflections is one that almost everyone has asked themselves at some time: Why make an effort to achieve something, material or otherwise, every day if it will all end in the end? In the specific case of Ilyich, his entire life has been carefully planned to advance in Russian society.
At the beginning of the short novel we can also read how his co-workers long for his position and, therefore, his lifestyle and his achievements. In this way, Tolstoy represents that nothing changes, that human beings continue to concentrate on their small struggles that have no importance for the future of the planet, and that they will be forgotten in a few years, when all those involved die. No one will care about a promotion at work when there is no one to remember it. Ivan Ilyich’s death is the death of everyone, the death that will happen to all of us. This novel helps us remember that time is finite and that the issues we worry about are often sterile.
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/la-muerte-de-ivan-ilich
