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Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Category: Fiction | Published: 1886 | Review Added: 29-04-2011
Tolstoy succinctly traces the life and career of Ivan Ilyich Golovin, a conventional but successful lawyer, then describes his slow and painful death and his reflections during it. As much as by physical suffering, Golovin is pained by doubts about the worth of the life he lived: he has been superficially honourable and superficially satisfied with his lot, but emotionally and spiritually his existence has been frigid and lonely.
This is a classic short story, saying a great deal about the human condition in a short space. The descriptions of the psychological accommodation to the process of dying are very convincing at a general level, but the individual character, life and crisis of Golovin are also very skillfully conveyed. The variety of ways in which his family and acquaintances react to the inconvenience of a terminally ill man in their midst is also interesting (oddly enough, it reminded me of Kafka's Metamorphosis, a story that in superficial style couldn't be more different).
As usual, Tolstoy's prose style is economical and direct, profound truths often couched in deceptively straightforward language.