Book #21: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

I picked this book up off our shelves simply because it was a) super short and b) by Tolstoy, and decided I'd take a whack at it. It's a novella, less than 100 pages, which makes it decidedly easier to swallow than War and Peace, for example. I liked that this felt like serious reading but that it only took maybe an hour and a half to finish it, instead of three months' worth of work.

This book is Tolstoy's look at death--Ivan Ilyich Golovin falls ill with an obviously terminal disease and we get to look inside his mind and see what he thinks about as he comes to dealing with his impending doom and slowly coming to terms with it. (Although I wouldn't say he ever really "comes to terms" with death itself.) Ivan Ilyich expresses some probably universal feelings about the impossibility of death for him and wondering why he has to go through this, etc., and it caused some introspection as to how I would feel if I were in his same position.

Here's the part I liked the most, that seemed especially applicable to me (and probably everyone): "The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: 'Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,' had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius – man in the abstract – was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and will all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of?... 'Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.' Such was his feeling" (78). Yes--don't we all think that way, until we've had enough experience with loved ones or health scares ourselves to believe otherwise?

For the record, I did think a bit about being in his same position--terminally ill, heading towards death. How would I feel? And I think probably a lot the same, at first, but the difference between Ivan Ilyich and me is that I am not isolated or alienated from my family or loved ones, and I believe in God and in a very happy afterlife. This is a very obvious statement, but that framing makes all the difference. That wouldn't take the bitterness of that experience away, but I think understanding the gospel would lessen it and help you to get past it quicker, and would put you in a place where you would be surrounded by people who really did care and want to help you (unlike Ivan Ilyich). Ivan Ilyich realizes right at the very end of his life that he had been living his life all wrong--there was no life for him to even stay alive for because he had been selfish and self-serving for most of his life. That's something I like about Tolstoy--he seems to come to conclusions through his characters' thoughts and self-seeking (like with Levin in Anna Karenina) that I believe in and agree with wholeheartedly, and he does it in the most sincere way.