Leo Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych - Critical Interpretation

Leo Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych. Critical Interpretation.

When it comes to analyzing a literary masterpiece, merely examining what the text says with out taking into account the broader contextual evidence of the author’s life, philosophy and societal background is insufficient. This is especially true about Leo Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych. Being born in Russia and learning about this author throughout my academic career, I can say, that, Tolstoy is a man who not only through his work, but also through his life actions manifests a clear message of disapproval and, sometimes, outright hatred of the moral and socio-economic dimensions of Russian reality. As insightful as they are, the implications of the death of Ivan Ilych aren’t the main message that the text is sending to its reader. His miserable act of dying is more of a consequence of the true problem, the system of living standards that is considered to be correct by the Russians of the time. The passage I chose, beginning from chapter 2 and ending with the first professional change in Ivan’s life, set the sarcastic and distrusting tone of the notion of “righteous living” that we can follow all throughout the text.

The Japanese have a saying: the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. These words describe the Russian reality better than anything else. And it is what Tolstoy is mocking in his work. Right from the beginning of chapter two he writes, “Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible” (6). Here Tolstoy does not explicitly state that the Russian society is flawed. He hints that the act of being like everyone else is terrible and does not expound that everyone else is doing something wrong. Russian literature has been subject of severe censorship for many decades and Tolstoy has to use subtle propositions to hint at his true message to avoid being exiled by the authorities, a fate many of his contemporaries faced.

Tolstoy continues by describing the life of Ilych’s father, touching upon a theme of lineage, which is extremely important to understanding the Russian culture:

His father had been an official who after serving in various ministries and departments in Petersburg had made the sort of career which brings men to positions from which by reason of their long service they cannot be dismissed, though they are obviously unfit to hold any responsible position, and for whom therefore posts are specially created, which though fictitious carry salaries of from six to ten thousand rubles that are not fictitious, and in receipt of which they live on to a great age. Such was the Privy Councillor and superfluous member of various superfluous institutions, Ilya Epimovich Golovin.(6)

An important detail here is that Tolstoy never openly criticizes Ilych’s father or his actions.