It is easy to look in on someone’s life and ridicule it. So many people are obsessed with picking apart celebrities’ lives, trying to constantly find problems in lives that aren’t perfect. I find myself finding faults in others, unfortunately. While reading Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych the narrator’s tone can be identified within the first few chapters. His disdain for Ivan’s pseudo-society aspirations is evident throughout the text. Yet, as I continued reading, I did feel sympathy for Ivan.
I couldn’t put my finger on my emotion as I finished the story, but when I read this prompt I instantly connected with it. It is as if all of Ivan’s life he has tried to live a life that he just cannot reach. Although he attempts to live extraordinary his life is nothing but ordinary. Once I came to this conclusion, my perspective of Ivan’s situation greatly changed. Rather than seeing Ivan as this self-centered, selfish patriarch, I saw him as a failed man trying to gain for the first time the love of his wife and the companionship of his friends. This is one of my greatest fears in life. To try my best to do the right thing and still not live a life that is fulfilling. It is so easy to try to marry the right person, decorate a nice house, and have a good job, but to still utterly fail.
It is not until Ivan’s death becomes increasingly imminent does his desperation to truly live seem sad to me versus aggravating. As Ivan’s death approaches, his goals are goals that are shared by all humanity: to live in the raw, in the honest world, guided by the love of family and the connection of friends. We all make mistakes, and to any given person we may appear to be as pathetic as Ivan (people in third world countries would probably view our $50 steaks as ridiculous), yet we can all connect on the level of living fully. It is sad to me that only when faced with death can Ivan realize this motivation, yet I believe Tolstoy is making a statement about Russian society through his character. I began to connect to Ivan and feel sorry for him as I began to connect to this timeless human tendency. By trying so hard to do right, Ivan set himself up for wrong -an event that so easily becomes reality.
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Jess--you said, "It is as if all of Ivan’s life he has tried to live a life that he just cannot reach." A clear, direct way to identify the central problem of his life as portrayed in the story.
You also talk about living life "in the raw," a fascinating phrase that I think could easily be turned into an essay and applied to some of the characters we've read this year. Which ones do and which ones don't, I wonder. Ilych a definite no, but who are the yeses?
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