The Life of Ivan Ilych: Ordinary or Appalling?
by Jeremiah Jensen
Jeremiah Jensen is a homeschooling senior from Houston, Texas. This summer, he completed Kepler’s summer course titled, “The Art of the Academic Essay.” The following is his final essay as presented for grade on August 27, 2020. We invite comments and dialogue from readers.
Although to an outside observer it might seem that Ivan Ilych lived a normal life, a careful analysis of his thoughts and actions shows otherwise. Many look at the details of his life and surmise that while he had some struggles and issues, he eventually worked them out in the end. On the contrary, his inherent selfishness and conceit never diminish even up to his death. In the end, he dies knowing that his life was futile––“Everything by which you have lived and live now is all a deception, a lie…” (p. 99).
Ever since adolescence, Ivan has been characterized by his ego. At an early age “he was given to lust, and to vanity,” (pp. 16-17), has several affairs as a young lawyer, and soon proves that he is willing to do whatever it takes to progress upward in society. Before he is out of law school, he has hardened himself into sin and immorality. Those things which as a youth “would have seemed repugnant to him” he now “manage[s] utterly to forget about” and “wasn’t troubled in the least by the memories of what had happened” (p. 17). He convinces himself that deeds which might appear evil could be done with such a spirit of decency and respectability that others might overlook it.
Ivan’s dismissal of his wrongdoing is due in part to the engineering of a Christless culture. He has been trained to ignore and excuse his errors. At first he was “disgusted with himself; but later on, having noticed that people of the highest standing did the same sorts of things and didn’t reckon them evil, he didn’t reconcile himself to them morally so much as manage utterly to forget about them…” (p. 17). The culture has drilled into him the normalcy of what even his hardened conscience tells him must be wrong.
These highest-ranking men are his idols; their examples shape his own choices. Rather than making decisions based on ethics or conscience, he mirrors the actions of his superiors. The fact of the matter is that his flattery-craving heart wants approval from others, and is willing to adopt anything to be admired. Even his decision to marry is based on a desire to fit in and be accepted. Before long, Ivan himself has become one of the elite, those “of the highest standing.”
His promotion to examining magistrate inspires in him a fresh arrogance. The feeling that “everyone was under his thumb” and “his awareness of his own power” made his job much more gratifying. After his pay raise, Ivan gloats to his wife “how every one of his enemies had been disgraced, how they prostrated themselves now before him, how he was envied for his position, and especially how fiercely well-liked he was in Petersburg” (p. 30). This is what he lives for. From the perspective of his colleagues and friends, he lives an ideal life, and he himself begins to think that he could want nothing more. His occupation starts to consume him, and the growing estrangement between him and his wife only intensifies. Ivan “tried to ignore his wife’s moods” and “began to use the duties of his office to fortify a wall protecting his independent world from the jaws of his marriage” (pp. 22-23). Between pride in his reputation and disgust for his familial duties, he “moved his life’s center of gravity closer and closer to the office” (p. 23).
With his upgraded salary, Ivan is able to purchase a larger and more luxurious house. He undertakes the decorating of the new residence himself, and in the process of doing so encounters a minor accident, falling off a stepladder and bruising his side. It passes quickly and he brushes it off just as quickly. This incident, while seemingly insignificant, becomes the turning point in his life. In the moment, Ivan is confident, almost boastful in his physical health and security. He dismisses the trivial mishap, but is soon to realize its gravity.
This event, though easily overlooked, is actually quite complex. Tolstoy uses a clever image to portray both Ivan’s physical downfall and his mental decline. Ever since his youth Ivan has steadily climbed the ladder of fame, favor, and fortune. Ironically, he is undone by a simple stepladder. On the one hand is what to him is the most important part of living, and on the other the most trivial. He cannot help but wonder at this correlation, and is struck by the strangeness and ignominy of succumbing to such an ordinary harm: “And I lost my life as if sailing into a storm, except right here, for this curtain. How horrible and how ridiculous! It can’t be true! Can’t be, but it is” (p. 63). He tries to convince himself that there is nothing really wrong, that he merely needs to straighten himself out and get over this infirmity, but is tormented by a growing realization of its severity.
Ivan begins to recognize from this time on that his life has been futile. Later he can see that during this time he “was edging ever closer to the abyss.” (p. 55). His selfishness and unkindness toward his family becomes more pronounced as his malady worsens. “Husband and wife began quarreling ever more constantly, and soon the ease and pleasantness of their lives dissipated…” (p. 39). As his pain intensifies, he is forced to seek medical aid and learns of internal injuries. Yet even the best physicians are unable to tell him anything definite about his diagnosis, and his concern is transformed to obsession: “His main interest in life became other people’s sickness and other people’s health… he would ask numerous questions and apply the answers to himself” (p. 44). This, his constant searching for answers, is one of the core elements of his post-injury life.
Ivan “could see he was dying, and was in unceasing despair” (p. 59). Quite a dramatic shift from his former exuberance and joy in life––what was it about death that so horrified him? He is afraid of the unknown and of losing everything dear to him, including his most precious possession: his own life. Ivan sees himself as more valuable and useful than other people, and pride and egotism naturally result from this flawed worldview. In his own words, “[he] was not some man in general. He had always had something unique about him that separated him from others” (p. 59).
Throughout most of the book, Tolstoy allows the reader to see only through the eyes of Ivan Ilych. We observe the world through his thoughts and deeds. However, at the beginning of the novel Tolstoy gives us a clear picture of his life through someone else’s eyes, those of his colleagues and family. This chapter is set after Ivan is dead, and we get a window into the thoughts and attitudes of his coworkers. Most immediately think not of the poor dead man, but of the position they will acquire, the increase in salary, any bonus they might receive from his death. They groan inwardly as they contemplate all the rigamarole of the funeral and other formalities which they will have to endure. In a heartless yet illuminating statement, we learn that “Each of them either thought or felt, Well, certainly, he’s dead, but, after all, I’m not” (p. 3). Even his wife is unconcerned with the fact of his death, but only worries about how much money she can squeeze out of the government as a result.
When it comes down to his last days, matters hardly get better for Ivan. His wife attempts to tell him of his daughter’s engagement, but all he wishes is for them to go away and leave him alone. He suffers both in body and mind, as he wonders, “What if my whole life, my entire conscious life, has been ‘false’” (p. 96)? He also reflects, “Maybe I didn’t live as I should’ve…But how could that be, when I did everything as I was supposed to” (p. 88). Perceiving the hopelessness of his current situation, he recognizes that it would be too late to rectify it if it had been false. These two ideas, the possibility that he might not have lived life correctly and the impossibility of doing anything about it, torment him until he is ready to give up and die. To his vain and misguided mind, the very notion of his having lived an imperfect existence is torturous to him.
Hours before his end, Ivan experiences an apparent moral epiphany. In rather vague terms, Tolstoy depicts him as reaching the bottom of a pit, and finding that at its lowest depth, “something was shining” (p. 102). While some might point to this as some kind of spiritual awakening, the rest of the book clearly proves the implausibility of this assertion. Though Ivan may lose some of the terror of death, his supposed discovery is really nothing more than an attempt to compose himself and make sure his life is “squared-away.” In the moment of death, he realizes that “his life might not have been what it should have,” (p. 102) but his understanding runs no deeper than that. Outside of a vague feeling of regret for the pain inflicted on himself and others, he makes no attempt to change anything.
Unlike true Christian salvation, his professed new understanding does not lead to any concrete steps toward atonement for past wrongs. On the contrary, he undergoes a somewhat gnostic enlightenment. His brief reflections on virtue and morality inspired only by the knowledge of death quickly give way to self-encouragement. Realizing that living on is agonizing both for himself and others, his fear is changed to submission toward his fate, almost an acceptance of death. He thinks of his demise “How good, and how simple…” (p. 103). Rather than a change of heart, he actually displays his incurable selfishness by not acting to mend his broken life.
The impulse behind Ivan’s being can be described in a single line, his last thought on life: “There won’t be anything else” (p. 104). This belief characterized him throughout his entire existence, and remained ingrained in his mind even after his alleged awakening. It was the primary instigator of his selfishness and arrogance, in that it gave him the audacity to live for himself. Due to his ego and disregard for others, he finds no one to turn to when he falls into pain and hopelessness: “To live like that, on the very edge of death, was all he could do, without a single person who could understand or feel sympathy for him” (p. 49). Unlike Ivan, we ought to live for others, or else we too will find that life is “meaningless and repugnant” (p. 88).
Bibliography
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych, translated by Ian Drebilatt, Melville House Publishing, 2008.
