It is these struggles that Tolstoy chronicles so movingly. However, when he takes ill, he struggles deeply and agonizingly with his own mortality and whether his life truly was well lived. By most measures of success, he lived a life that was admiral. Ivan had the right education, married a decent woman, had children and made a series of strong career moves. Tolstoy opens the tale with his friends learning of his death and then he unspools the tale of a life that was lived the way "it was supposed to be lived". This book introduces us to Ivan, and we immediately learn that he has died. Tolstoy's character's age is brilliant because it is a reminder that death can knock at any age. I say fortunate because the one lesson I learned is that I don't want to get to the end of life and regret the choices I made in life. I was fortunate at an early age to come face-to-face with the possibility of a shortened life. As a scoured her shelves for a book to select, I found this one marked as one of her favorites. By the story's end he is at peace.I read this novella as a tribute to my friend and fellow reader, Regina Lindsey. He comforts himself with happy memories of childhood and gradually realizes that he has ignored all his inner yearnings as he tried to do what was expected of him.
Diagnosed with an incurable illness, he at first denies the truth, but influenced by the simple acceptance of his servant Gerasim, Ivan Ilich comes to embrace the boy's belief that death is natural and not shameful. In the second section, Tolstoy reveals the life of the man whose death seems so trivial: "Ivan Ilich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." The perfect bureaucrat, Ivan Ilich treasures his orderly domestic and official routine.
The first section of the story portrays Ivan Ilich's colleagues and family after he has died, as they reflect on the significance of his death for their careers and fortunes. (The name Ilich is also transliterated Ilitch, Ilych, or Ilyich.) Ivan Ilich's crisis is remarkably similar to that of Tolstoy himself as described in A Confession (1882).
Novella by Leo Tolstoy, published in Russian as Smert Ivana Ilycha in 1886, considered a masterpiece of psychological realism.
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