Philosophical fiction Realist fiction The fear of death The search for meaning The pain and pleasure principle Family dynamics Societal hypocrisy Spiritual awakening
The Death of Ivan Ilych is a novella by Leo Tolstoy published in 1886, in the last years of the writer's work. The main theme of the book is the nature of both life and death.
Ivan Ilych is a bureaucrat whose ambition from a very young age was to get a job within the government of the Russian Empire. Although his dreams are coming true, he will soon realize that his effort has not been worth it.
One day Ivan suffers a fall while repairing the curtains from the top of a ladder and begins to suffer constant pain, which will get worse to the point of knowing that he is dying, which leads him to consider the reason for death and all the loneliness that he suffers despite being surrounded by all the aristocracy that he had surrounded himself with in recent years.
The fall from the top of the ladder is a metaphor for life, in which sometimes when you are at the top you can fall.
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Readers interested in philosophical questions Fans of classic Russian literature Students studying existential themes Individuals exploring the concept of death and dying
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Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, known in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer multiple times nominated to the Nobel Prize of Literature (and that...
We have 16 books by Leo Tolstoy in Alice and Books library
It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!
It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.
Can it be that I have not lived as one ought? Suddenly came into his head. But how not so, when I've done everything as it should be done?