The Death of Ivan Ilych - Essay Example

If your life does not affect the lives of others, then it has very little meaning. The ways in which Ivan Ilych treated people during his lifetime was reciprocated by them in his death. Ivan Ilych was too concerned with duty and pleasure to be interested in anyone else, and the opening scene of the story - the announcement of his death - portrays how others showed the same attitudes toward his death. The first statement that is uttered in the story is by one of his supposed friends, "Gentlemen, Ivan Ilych has died.

' (Tolstoy 363). This spurs a flurry of mental activity among the others in the room, who all knew Ilych. "The first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances" (363). A general sense of relief sprang up in each man's mind as they sat around and contemplated the fact that while Ilych was dead, they were still alive (364). Then their relief turned to irritation when they realized that they were close enough to the dead man to have to go and pay their respects to his family.

Duty called, and they had to answer. This insistence on doing the "right thing" mirrors Ilych's own course of action during his lifetime. He was always consumed with doing the right thing. Ilych excelled in his law studies and established himself as "a capable, cheerful, good-natured, and sociable man, though strict in the fulfillment of what he considered to be his duty: and he considered his duty to be what was so considered by those in authority" (Tolstoy 372). He got married, not for love, but because "his social circle approved of the match.

He was swayed by both these considerations: the marriage gave him personal satisfaction, and at the same time it was considered the right thing by the most highly placed of his associates" (375). Once his marriage began to lose its amusements, Ilych threw himself into his work because his duties there let him escape his wife for a period of time (376). Another thing that Ilych and his colleagues had in common was their love of pleasure, and their chief source of pleasure was playing bridge (384-385).

It was a bridge game Ilych's colleagues were focused on as they went to view his dead body (365):Schwartz was waiting for him in the adjoining room with legs spread wide apart and both hands toying with his top-hat behind his back. The mere sight of that playful, well-groomed, and elegant figure refreshed Peter Ivanovich. His very look said that this incident of a church service for Ivan Ilych could not be a sufficient reason for infringing the order of the session--in other words, that it would certainly not prevent his unwrapping a new pack of cards and shuffling them that evening in fact, that there was no reason for supposing that this incident would hinder their spending the evening agreeably (366).

Perhaps Ilych would not have minded his friends' preoccupation with bridge, the leisure activity that had supplied him with so many pleasurable diverting hours. One thing, however, is certain: Ilych did not want his friends to suffer from the same misconceptions which had guided his motives during life - the idea that was expressed by Peter Ivanovich that nothing tragic could ever happen to him (369). Ivan Ilych suffered from this delusion all his life. His focus was pleasure. No great harm ever befell him.

No real tragedy ever touched him. The deaths of his own children could