The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Bantam Classics)

Let me put get the usual sobriquets out of the way: this is a brilliant story. Tolstoy masterfully telescopes the life of a man from his colleagues and work life down to his household concerns and pastimes then down to his wife and daughter then his son. Finally, Tolstoy brings us into the very essence of a man’s soul as his life slowly circles the drain.There’s pathos, insight and understanding of the man.This is my first foray into Tolstoy and once I realized - about 85% of the way through the novella - what he was doing I regretted not reading him earlier.All that has been said before and by people much better read and better at reviews than me.Now to what annoyed me. This didn’t really hit me until a few days after I finished the story and I was watching a documentary on Tolstoy’s life. What annoyed me is that when it comes right down to it this is yet another — maybe one of the first —- to malign the middle-class and its values.There’s a long history of this. It’s the reason why Jane Austen, that documenter of the middle-class of her time, is either derided or turned into something she isn’t. I evern remember reading a review calling her a subversive! The critique was trying to make her anything but middle class. This hated in the U.S. was founded by Sinclair Lewis’ Babbit, became part of popular culture throughout the 60s and still shows itself very obviously in films like American Beauty and not so obviously as just part of our culture. Anything middle-class equals bad. Anything mocking or jeering at middle-class equals good.I’m guilty of it myself. I often don’t understand the likes and dislikes of my suburban, middle-class friends — but that’s my problem. They like what they like for whatever reason they like.What annoyed me about this book was that Tolstoy, an aristocrat and owner of 300 some odd peasants, is looking down on the middle-class and condemning the things they like - solid careers, more money and nice curtains - as without meaning. Tolstoy, like so many after him, seemed to view those nice things as the middle-classes raison d’etre. They aren’t. They’re just nice things that help make life a bit nicer. Maybe it’s in bad taste but it’s their taste. They realize they’re not poor and probably won’t, like Tolstoy, be rich. So they enjoy things. Sure they could be reading Michael Foucault and injecting conversations with Nietzsche quotes. But they have to work on Monday so they’ll pile their kids into their big SUVs and run out to a decent meal at TGI McFunsters and come home and watch the game. No harm in that. Mr. Tolstoy and I may not see the value in it but maybe that's our problem and not the problem of an entire class of people.

First, this is not War and Peace, you can read it in a normal time period instead of over an entire season.In many ways Tolstoy is the first of the modern authors in that I believe he knew and loved all his characters which is one of the primary tenants of brilliant writing. Ivan Ilych, for example, has many contradictory sides that come together within the character and that can only be achieved by a writer who knows more about Ilych than is needed in the story. I write this because the entire story could have been just the dialogue of Ilych with himself, at least if it had been written by someone not as talented and in one dimension. Now, unfortunately I have probably confused you but that is how The Death of Ivan Ilych is, while entertaining from the beginning half way through you realize that the story is not about what you thought it was, it is in a different place, and at that point you are captivated.Based on the first portion of the story, almost half, the reader feels that this is a biography of a Russian government worker, a judge, and his family and social life. In fact it is about his feelings about life as he closes in on his own death. He questions his relationships, his life, his achievements, the importance of all of those, and the reader can relate if honest with themselves. I kept reminding myself that Gandhi felt this was one of the best works he had ever read and it made it easier to understand Tolstoy’s motive. Without that I may have been lead to believe this was going to be morbid and would end with the grim reaper entering from behind a curtain and miss the teachings that were in my hands.Maybe now I will take on War and Peace.

Is there a meaning in my life that will not be annihilated by the death that inevitably awaits me ? This was the question that preoccupied Tolstoy, a question he posed in his book A Confession and the question he explored in his novella The death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoy doesn’t merely answer this question, but he whispers it to our ears. We probably didn’t hear the whole thing, maybe he didn’t tell us the whole thing, but his answer rings through our soul; and if ever there comes a time when we will ask the same question, his voice will be the first one to come out.The novel starts with the death of Ivan. He is introduced to us by a third person narrator who seems omniscient. Presumably, Ivan was an important figure, an eminent government functionary whose death elicits a faint surprise from his colleagues. But their surprise doesn’t soar beyond a formality. Promotions and due diligence for the funeral is what preoccupies them. It is up to his most well known acquaintance Peter to maintain the sense of propriety and it is through him that the narrator’s vision is colored in depicting us the death of Ivan.“The expression on the face says that what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly…Besides this there was in that expression a reproach and a warning to the living. This warning seemed to Peter out of place, or at least not applicable to him.”This description of the dead Ivan brings up a sense of mystery in us, a sense of mystery that heightens when Ivan’s wife tells Peter,“He suffered terribly the last few days.”And so Tolstoy sets up the plot. In the subsequent chapters the story continues detailing the ordinary life of Ivan culminating with his death. But why did he suffer ? This is where the beauty of the plot lies. Not only do we get to know the answer to his suffering, we get to hear the answer to Tolstoy’s grave question whispered to us by Ivan.

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thought provokinglife is same , rich , poor , downtrodden, but its the samelive life for the ultimate truth

Very good book, of course it is a classic. Short easy to read.

The best. The Russian writers can compress a life into a few minutes and those minutes can overwhelm the reader.

Good