The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Tolstoy condemns “Ivan Ilyich’s opportunism, marriage of convenience, vanity, and limitation, and then, with astonishment, the reader finds himself beginning to like this conventional man and to be sorry when he starts to lose out to death.”

Tolstoy introduces Ilyich as a care-free, pleasure loving follower. He lives his life in a way that society dictates he should. He takes the sort of job that is appropriate to his standing, he marries because she is a "good match", and he decorates his house just like everyone else trying to appear richer than they are. And yet as this stereotypical man nears death he begins to re-evaluate his life. Ilyich attempts to figure out what went wrong in his life, why he is suffering from such a great pain now; if it is punishment for something? Ilyich struggles to think about his life objectively, however, his society's dogma has been so deeply ingrained in his mind that he cannot bring himself to admit that living any other way could possible have been better. But as Ilyich looks further back on his life, all the way back to childhood, he notices that he can remember more "good" in his childhood memories. As the memories become more recent there is less and less Ilyich remembers as good. This is when the first inkling of doubt appears in his mind; that possibly there could have been another, better way to live his life. When Ilyich begins to realize and grasp the truth, the reader begins to sympathize with this man who is finally realizing how he could improve his life on the brink of death.