Book Summary: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

The story is about a man named Ivan Ilyich who was generally a happy go-lucky kind of guy. He becomes faced with death; the end. He becomes extremely frightened of this end and begins to question it. He sees his life as though he should have spent his time in a different way from what he did.

Ivan, once a lawyer and then a judge, gets married to a beautiful woman named Praskovya Fyodorovna and has a happy life until a certain point in his life. They were for the most part a perfect match, although they did have their disputes just as any couple does. His entire life revolved around his judicial work.

His marriage begins to weaken and he begins to weaken inside. His children started to die. "Two of their children had died, and so family life became even more unpleasant for Ivan Ilyich." (p.59) "Another child had died." (p.60) "Ivan Ilyich sometimes complained of a strange taste in his mouth and some discomfort in his left side, but this could hardly be called ill health." (p.73) He gets depressed when he finally realizes that he's going to die and alone.

The doctor came to his house for regular check-ups on him and Ivan made people stay away from him and he lays on his back and waits and waits for that final moment; death. "Oh, frightfully! He screamed incessantly, not for minutes but for hours on end. He screamed for three straight days without pausing for breath." (p.43) "Why deceive myself? Isn't it clear to everyone but me that I'm dying, that it's only a question of weeks, days-perhaps minutes?" (p.88) "He cried about his helplessness, about his terrible loneliness, about the cruelty of people, about the cruelty of God, about the absence of God." (p.118) "He died at the age of forty five, a member of the Court of Justice." (p.49)

He questioned death and he knew it was coming, coming for him. In the end he finally accepted it and he thought it wasn't death that he faced that there was no death. In his final moment, "it is all over, said someone standing behind him. He heard these words and repeated them in his soul. Death is over, he said to himself. There is no more death. He drew in a breath, broke off in the middle of it, stretched himself out, and died." (p.134) This book included Tolstoy's own perception of death and if you like death, then this is most definitely a good book to read about death.

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. Book.