Week 11 Analysis: Literary Analysis of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"

A literary element that I had noticed and appreciated throughout "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" was foreshadowing. While we obviously knew Ivan Ilyich was dead from the beginning of the story, there were several moments of foreshadowing for events that we would witness in the time of the story prior to the death of Ivan Ilyich. When Peter Ivanovich speaks to Ilyich's wife, she tells Peter that Ivan has "suffered terrible the last few days" and continues to specify that for the "last three days he screamed incessantly" (744). Initially I had expected this just to be a detail about how Ilyich's health was. I didn't expect to read any of what Ivan Ilyich would scream about or why he was screaming. But looking back, I say this was foreshadowing because we did get to witness this actual event later in the story. When his wife was telling him how he should be taking his medicine, he interrupted her to shout "For Christ's sake let me die in peace!" (775) While this isn't incessant screaming, I still identify this as the screaming that his wife was referring to. When looking at the relationship between Ilyich and his wife, and her emotional state about his condition, I believe that this is what she was referring to. She's exaggerating the extent in which he was screaming whether that be because of how she might have remembered the traumatic event or because of her personality and lackluster relationship with Ivan. To specify why I think their relationship wasn't the best, his wife noticed his "bursts of temper" and we're told that "her husband had a dreadful temper and made her life miserable" (756). We are also told that "she began to feel sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself the more she hated her husband" (756). She "began to wish he would die" but didn't actually want him to die just because she needed his salary. I believe the theme of hopelessness is present throughout this story as demonstrated by both the relationship between Ivan Ilyich and his wife and Ilyich's deteriorating condition. His wife had no hope for improvement in their relationship as evident by her internal desire for him to go ahead and die. Ivan Ilyich also had no hope for his health to improve. He was in denial the whole time even before he had even admitted he was in denial. He would constantly consult doctors because he was panicking, losing hope, and just trying to find anything to give him back some hope. He even lashes out at his wife and asks to die in peace as I had mentioned earlier. I believe Tolstoy's religious affiliation played a part in this story because of Ivan Ilyich's approach to death. In the biography provided before the story I read that Tolstoy "founded his own religion" and his religion "involved rejecting any idea of an afterlife" (737). Ilyich doesn't make any mentions of going to Heaven when he says he just wants to die in peace. When he does finally die, he says "Death is finished" and "It is no more!" (778). He viewed his life as being completely over and with no mention of an afterlife because Tolstoy didn't believe in one.


Holstoy, Leo. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." The Norton Anthology World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, Third Edition, vol. D, W. W. Norton 2012, pp. 735-778