The inevitable social conflicts transposes to the inner life of a person, depicting agonizing qualms of his heroes. Like many characters of the later Tolstoy, Ivan Ilyich is not a very prominent individual. He an ordinary person, like many others. This ordinariness of their lives is being recurrently underlined by Tolstoy. From the very beginning of “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, Tolstoy points out that its main goal is to portray the life and death of the ordinary average person, that make the bulk of every society. Tolstoy puts Ivan Ilyich, the ordinary man, face to face with external exceptional circumstances: as a result of an accidental hurt, Ivan Ilyich dies from cancer too early before his time. This exceptional circumstance is needed to force Ivan Ilyich to re-think his own life anew, realizing all lies and hypocrisy. Faced with the inevitable, Ivan at first evades the direct answer. In the dialog with his awoken conscience, he argues that he led a decent life. But as the end was coming, there was no more reasons left to bargain with himself, and Ivan Ilyich gave up. He failed to justify his life. Throughout his existence he was only interested in the worldly appearance, in how he will look in the eyes of the others, especially his superiors, ignoring the needs of his family for emotional support and depriving himself of the emotional development.
The three days of screaming experienced by Ilyich, where in "time ceased to exist for him" and he "struggled as a man condemned to death struggles in the hands of an executioner, knowing there is no escape" (Tolstoy 131), is analogous to Christian purgation. The three days is the trial for Ivan Ilyich, only this time he is the one being judged by his uncovered sense of right and wrong. Unfortunately for him he realized the life’s value and the certainty of death too late, when lying on his deathbed.
Secondary to the inner conflict of Ivan Ilyich is the indifference and contempt felt by others that Ivan Ilyich had contact with. He never cared enough for his relatives, or colleagues, therefore their unsympathetic reaction of the new of his coming death was only natural.
Tolstoy’s fascination with the inner life of the human being leads to a moral test of its protagonist by showing overwhelming transformation in its conscience. To make this transformation, a person has to be faced with eminent catastrophe. The catastrophe is the bell that wakes up the negligent conscience. The awakening often takes a long time, but always end in enlightenment. In “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” the history of the events, leading up to the culmination is not important for the author, and usually takes a small part of the text. It is briefly re-told by the author, who concentrates his and reader’s attention on the psychological life of the character, who despises his previous life, and on his relationship with the world around.
In “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” the plot does not unfold in the chronological order. It starts in reverse, from the logical end, with the impressions of Ivan Ilyich’s death on his co-workers. By breaking the chronological order, Tolstoy makes the consequences of the horrible culmination even more morbid.
Tolstoy was a devoted Russian Orthodox, and a lot of his works are based on the stories form the Bible. The key point of the Russian Christian religious tradition is the forgiveness of sins, after a person fully confessed. After three days of anguish to find meaning in the emptiness of his life, Ivan Ilyich saw the divine light. For him, death is the light and freedom from his previous transgressions against his soul.
Works Cited
Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich. New York: Bantam, 1981
McClure, Beverly. Analysis of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." January 23, 2002 <http://faculty.stcc.cc.tn.us/bmcclure/lessons2/ivanllyich.htm>
