In this blog post, I aim to deeply reflect on the essence of life and death through Leo Tolstoy’s ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’.
I’ve wondered what I would do today if I knew I would die tomorrow. I worried about my parents. I should tell them I love them and thank them. The rest of my family and friends would be sad too. But the most pitiable person was me. Since I am the one who loves myself most, I thought I would pity and comfort myself—the self who knows I will die tomorrow and the self who will die tomorrow.
I began to wonder why I felt such sorrow at the fact of my own death. All humans die, and since I am human, I already knew I would die someday. So why did my feelings suddenly change just because that day was tomorrow?
I wondered if it might be fear of the unknown. I had never experienced death. No one has. I had thought about living well, but never about dying well. We strive daily to maintain healthy lives, make plans, and achieve goals, yet we scarcely ponder the crucial final moment. Why do we turn away from such an important issue? Perhaps it stems from a universal psychological desire to deny death. People are deeply interested in living well—eating well, living happily, and maintaining health—to the point where the term “well-being” fits almost any context without sounding out of place. Yet dying is not something that happens according to one’s will. All kinds of dangers exist, both internal and external, and sometimes death comes suddenly, without any known cause. So, does a method for actually dying well even exist? We can find a clue to that answer in Leo Tolstoy’s novel.
Even in Leo Tolstoy’s time, before “well-being” became a trend, the values people pursued seemed similar. The novel’s protagonist, Ivan Ilyich, was a capable judge. He worked, married a beautiful woman from a wealthy family, had children, and enjoyed leisure time playing cards with friends, maintaining a happy, refined life. That is, until he contracted an incurable illness.
Ivan Ilyich, who had lived with pride and without a shred of conscience, initially pretended not to know about his illness. He convinced himself he wasn’t sick, confident that following the doctor’s orders would cure him. This was Ivan Ilyich’s way of preparing for death. But this approach only inflicted greater suffering upon him. His physical pain grew steadily worse, and the added mental anguish doubled his suffering. One question arose for me here. Perhaps ‘Ivan Ilyich’ found the increasing physical pain increasingly unbearable. Yet he feared death itself more, and despaired more at the fact that death was approaching. I couldn’t understand why people dreaded death so much, since pain ceases when one dies.
But upon further reflection, perhaps death is so terrifying not merely because it signifies the end of life, but because it means severing ties with everything we love. Farewell to loved ones, to the achievements built over a lifetime, to the small daily joys—this separation from all these things might be the fundamental cause of our fear of death. In the case of ‘Ivan Ilyich’, I think he found it difficult to accept the situation of being suddenly separated from everything he loved in life. Furthermore, another reason we fear death might stem from the fact that we know nothing about the life that follows. The uncertainty of what awaits after death, however natural a phenomenon it may be, can instill profound terror in humans.
But looking back on ‘Ivan Ilyich’s’ life before he fell ill, it became clear. During his time at law school, he repeated actions he himself found repulsive, ignoring their absurdity until he became so desensitized he no longer found them repulsive. The more he tolerated the absurdity, the more it grew, yet he naturally deceived himself and continued what he considered a noble life. This was the same manner in which he died. Just as he couldn’t admit he was not a noble person but an absurd and ugly one, he found it unbearable to face the fact that his illness was not improving but racing toward death. In other words, he lived and prepared for death in the same way.
As his suffering intensified, ‘Ivan Ilyich’ questioned God: What had he done wrong to deserve such trials? Only when death finally loomed before him did he seek confirmation that he had lived well. He had spent his entire life thinking about living well, yet never truly cared whether he actually was living well. It was only upon feeling the agony of death that he realized what true well-being truly meant.
Life is a succession of moments, but death is a single instant. People spend their lives pondering how to live well, yet rarely consider how they will die. We agonize over what to strive for, what to achieve, what values to gain, and what happiness to attain. We don’t feel the importance of death because it is a single moment and we cannot see where that moment lies. Yet, though we cannot see where it lies, death certainly exists. Since the way we die is the same as the way we live, we must consider death when thinking about how to live.
‘Ivan Ilyich’ found solace only in his servant ‘Gerasim’ among the people around him who tried to comfort him. Ivan Ilyich found it uncomfortable that those around him pitied the dying man while acting as if death had no place in their own lives. Though the people around Ivan Ilyich also strove to live happily, they never considered death. As I read the novel, I too thought Ivan Ilyich’s death had nothing to do with me. Far from empathizing, I observed and criticized his life. I was no different from ‘Ivan Ilyich’ or those around him. This is the answer to the question posed at the beginning. I will likely forget death the moment I finish the book and close it. But whenever I think of well-being, I want to remember well-dying and prepare for a death different from ‘Ivan Ilyich’s’.
Finally, in the course of living, we strive to achieve too many things and chase too many values. Yet sometimes we need to pause and consider what life I truly desire, and how I wish to depart at its end. By confronting death, we will finally come to understand life in its true meaning.
