Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and The Death of the Ego
We will all die someday, though that is a fact that concerns the dying, not the living. In Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” Tolstoy explores this troubling theme by vividly describing the life of Ivan Ilyich as he realizes he is dying. But death is ambiguous. It is uncertain whether the protagonist actually accepts his death, or merely deceives himself into acceptance by justifying his unsatisfactory life. Through examining Tolstoy’s own life, correlations between author and character lead to a suspicion that “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” is actually a memoir of near-death experience.
After analyzing Ivan Ilyich’s aristocratic lifestyle, Tolstoy could be condemning the ego that bound Ilyich to a life that would ultimately disappoint him. Though Ilyich realized he lived wrongly, no definition of a right life is clearly depicted, and the other characters comfort themselves not with their own analysis, but by leaving death to the dying. Therefore, the death of Ivan Ilyich troubles the reader with its ambiguity, suggesting Tolstoy begs them to examine their own life and impending death before it is too late.
There is a shocking correlation between the life of Tolstoy and his representation of Ivan Ilyich. Both men lived aristocratically, studied law, had turbulent marriages, and idolized their childhood. The Norton Anthology of World Literature says “Tolstoy looked back on his childhood as idyllic” (Norton 736). As Ivan Ilyich reflected on his memories, “they always began with what was nearest in time and then went back to what was most remote-to his childhood-and rested there” (Tolstoy 774). This shows how only childhood memories were sufficient to comfort Ilyich as he suffered from the pain the rest of his life had caused him. Both admired the simplicity of peasantry, something comparable to a childlike state of being. This is seen when Gerasim the peasant is Ilyich’s only comforting companion in his dying days. Ilyich sees compassion in Gerasim, compared to the revulsion in his family. Additionally, it can be inferred that Tolstoy was subjected to morphine during his service in the Crimean War, a common pain reliever on the battlefield. Morphine was the medicine for Ivan Ilyich’s pain and from which he was able to sink in oblivion.
The similarities Tolstoy incorporated into the life of Ivan Ilyich from his own emphasize the ambiguity of the story. The reader is not entirely certain who the protagonist is, especially from the continuous shifts in perspective throughout the story. It is at once the account of one man and of many. However, this is crucial to the moral of the story – the imagined singularity of life.
Peter Ivanovich demonstrates this when, after viewing the dead body of Ivan Ilyich, he disregards the warning that death is inevitable: “this warning seemed to Peter Ivanovich out of place, or at least not applicable to him” (Tolstoy 742). Ironically, this was Ivan Ilyich’s reaction when musing on Karl Kieseetter’s Caius. Perhaps if men admitted that they were weaker than their ego allowed them to be, they would not feel the denial and reproach as Ivan Ilyich did.
The vices of the ego and aristocracy go hand in hand when considering the ideology of superiority. Aristocrats view themselves as superior to peasants, just as the ego views itself as superior to everything else. Aristocracy is a class identification. Ego is whatever someone identifies with most – like aristocracy – to the point that their life would be meaningless without it. Ivan Ilyich identified with correctness, pleasantness, and decorum-everything his death was not. This juxtaposition from his livelihood suggests a dissolution from his ego. Once everything he stood for has fallen, he realizes he has nothing and never did.
From the article “Conversion, Reversion, and Subversion in Tolstoi’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by David Shepherd, Shepherd muses on the symbolism of Ilyich’s illness. The illness was brought on by the fall from the step ladder, something Shepherd interpreted as “cruelly symbolic of the social ladder which he had devoted so much energy into climbing” (Shepherd 404). Thus, Ilyich’s fall from what he identified with brought upon the fall of his ego.
The fall of an ego can similarly be interpreted as an ego death. This suggests that Tolstoy did not mean for Ilyich’s death to be literal. The repeated inclusion of morphine as “perhaps the key moments of his conversion, at least in part, hallucination” (Shepherd 409), supports the theory of ego death, since the mind is more susceptible to dissolution when given dissociatives. Considering Tolstoy’s change in spirituality and views on aristocracy after hs service in the Crimean War, the possibility of him having his own ego death is plausible.
Furthermore, Tolstoy emphasized that living for society’s standards will not result in true happiness. Throughout his life, Ivan Ilyich lived accordingly to what would bring him the most money, comfort, and likeability among his comrades. Ilyich was successful in this endeavor, but in retrospect he viewed it as “it was if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up…I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent my life was ebbing away from me” (Tolstoy 773). Ilyich could not comprehend this until he was out of time to rectify it, until “it occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might, after all, be true” (Tolstoy 776). Alas, the way Ilyich lived to please an image brought him not happiness, but distraction from his turbulent marriage and fear of not being liked.
During his dying days, Ilyich expressed the desire not to be liked, but pitied. In 1906 Tolstoy made a diary entry stating “to take pity is to love” (Shepherd 405). Therefore, Ilyich is distressed because “what most tormented Ivan Ilyich was the no one pitied him as he wished to be pitied” (Tolstoy 767). Ilyich was not loved as he wished to be loved. The only companion who pitied him was Gerasim, since he did not ignore the fact that Ilyich was dying. Gerasim extended bottomless support and gave death a simple charisma, symbolic of the wholesome life of peasantry that Ilyich – and Tolstoy – admired. Ilyich extended his own pity – or love, in this sense – to his weeping son, by “release(ing) them and free himself from these sufferings” (Tolstoy 778). Ilyich dies, seemingly from his acceptance of love and death. This is the epitome of an ego death – the mind forgiving itself and letting go of all it identification with, including pain. However, the way Ilyich forgave himself leads him to see that once he relieved himself from the fear of death “there was no fear because there was no death. In the place of death was light” (Tolstoy 778). This suggests a rebirth or a continuation of the ego. The way he let go was an acceptance that everything was not as it should have been, but that that was all right.
Ivan Ilyich’s life was one of evasion and correction – his death was avoiding it through denial and later through acceptance. In this aspect, his death was of no change from his life, “but the apotheosis of an ego whose imperative is to order the world around it in such a way to ensure its continuing security” (Shepherd 410). Ivan Ilyich was a product of his society, even in death.
Since his acceptance was deeming everything just, and therefore free of pain, Ivan Ilyich did not transcend his ego. I believe this is why Tolstoy manifested Ilyich’s death as physical, as a warning to us that if the ego cannot be conquered, the body will die. Death is the consequence of living without egotistical lenses, or not accepting the warnings from men who have already failed this. Ivan Ilyich was a product of a society who lived a life of singularity and false companionship. Ultimately, Tolstoy forces us to examine our own society, friends, and self, as if we were dying. The story is ambiguous because death is ambiguous, as is everyone’s concept of a meaningful life. The best takeaway from “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” is to challenge our egos before it is too late.
Works Cited
The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume E, W.W Norton and Company, 2012, pp 735-778
Shepherd, David. “Conversion, Reversion, and Subversion in Tolstoi’s “The Death of Ivan Il’ich”.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol.71, no.3, July 1993.