The Death of Ivan Ilych
Ratings139
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings139
Average rating4.2
This satirical novella tells the story of the life and early death of a high court judge. Ivan Ilych is proud of his achievements and his status in society, despite his poor relations with his wife which renders his home life bleak and joyless. When he becomes hopelessly ill he begins to realize that he has not after all lived the good life he had supposed he was enjoying.
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A succinct, masterfully written novella true to its title. Tolstoy brings so much humanity into the story and characters, revealing all the things people notice and think but never speak about. Reminds me of Our Town a bit. Both are slightly removed from our time, but remain completely relevant. Ivan Ilych begs the reader to look at themselves and their world, what they care about and the consequences of their choices. The selfish perspectives we all seem to be stuck with are exposed, and their fruit is as ugly as you'd expect.
I really enjoyed it, so much that I'm eager to start a longer work of his. Gotta ease my way into War and Peace with Revelations or something.
This book deals with the death of well, Ivan Ilych and its focus is mainly on the inevitably of death, how people deal with it, the frustrations and sufferings of the protagonist, how he himself copes or at least tries to with death, as well as his regrets about a life wasted.
To me, while the book is excellent especially with how well it deals with the character's thoughts about death, him slowly realizing that there is no coming back from what he is suffering and how he first tries to play the seriousness of his disease down. It does that very well.
But there is another element, a universality of Ilych's experience that is evident in the sufferings of people around us and this book just describes it to perfection.
