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This intimate and agonizing look at the death of a man, his thoughts as he is dying, and his last realizations about the life he has led, is powerful and harrowing. What makes it so impactful, I believe, is that Ivan Ilych is neither a saintly nor an evil man. He is an upper-middle-class government worker, he has friends and family, he is well respected, and he has climbed the social and career ladders just as was expected of him. But, he is dying, and he examines his life and finds it wanting.

Tolstoy deals with both Ivan’s life before his illness and the events that immediately precede his death. He shows Ivan living a life that is disingenuous in so many ways, and he shows him struggling against death and feeling the lack of connection to his family, the loneliness of his passing from this earth.

Another aspect of death that Tolstoy captures beautifully is the reality that as Ivan is losing his life, others are continuing with theirs. All the places in his world that he occupied are being passed to others. His peers contemplate how his death will affect their positions in the hierarchy, his daughter continues with her plans to marry, his wife contemplates her financial position. Only a servant of the household, Gerasim, seems to grasp the importance of being kind and attentive to Ivan, but also truthful:

“We shall all die. So what’s a little trouble?�� he said, meaning by this to express that he did not complain of the trouble just because he was taking this trouble for a dying man, and he hoped that for him too someone would be willing to take the same trouble when his time came.

Again, one of the themes seems to be how adept people are at denying death until it is standing on their own chest. No one else seems willing to discuss death with Ivan, nor do they seem aware that what is happening to him will undoubtedly happen to them as well. And Ivan, himself, admits that he viewed death in exactly that way before it came to him; feeling that

Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal⁠—had seemed to him all his life correct only as regards Caius, but not at all as regards himself.

The story is depressing, but the end is hopeful, and since we must all face what Ivan faces, that is a necessary element to hold on to.

This is at least my third reading of this story, and it still has that same undeniable truth in it that I found the first time around. The first time I read it, I do not think I had had much truck with death. Death is much better known to me now, and I wonder if Tolstoy was, himself, wondering if his life had been lived well enough–I wonder if we don’t all ask ourselves that question to some extent when we come closer to our end and find ourselves to be quite ordinary in so many ways, despite our efforts and our accomplishments.