death of ivan ilyich

[ books I have read ][ Category - Writing ][ Death ]

A masterpiece in brevity. Tolstoy recounts the life of one Ivan Ilyich, a judge, who gets an incurable sickness and begins on his journey towards accepting his death.

The book keeps making it seem like either Ivan will get cured or come to some philosophical enlightenment with regards to understanding his death but he never does. He continues denying and fighting and asking "why" the whole time until the very end, at which point he simply screams in "O"s agonizingly for three days before he passes on.

The book is all about how abstracted death is when it is not happening to oneself. We are always viewing death with statistics or with a detached sadness but "The death of Ivan Ilyich" bring you right up close and personal with Ivan - and by extension, his death. And staring death right it its face was discomforting and a feeling that stayed with me. Is Ivan's wild flailing what it will be like for me?

Epicurus once said

Why fear death? When I am it is not, and when it is, I am not.

Ivan Ilyich certainly doesn't see it this way. He keeps asking “why” as he has done everything that one is supposed to do in life. His dissapointment comes from the realization that his identity doesn't mean what he thought it did.

When it comes to death, Tolstoy emphasizes that it is without regard for anything you've done or can do.

For some reason, it of reminded me of the movie the ballad of buster scruggs where death was always looming around every corner.

It's captivating for one to think about death, about what one should do when death comes, and how one will react when it does come, how the end will be, however uncomfortable these thoughts may be.