Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych recounts the life story of a man who, while in his final days of life, realizes his life had been worthless and subsequently rectifies his lost and broken soul. The fundamental cause of Ivan’s empty existence, which is characterized by a dynamicity of values, a fulfillment of self-interest, and a desire to conform to what others view as right, is the main character’s lack of spiritual connectedness with himself, with others, and with “He whose understanding matters.” Through the restoration of spirituality through a religious awakening, Ivan fixes his life, transcends death, and emerges into light.
While the physical cause for the main character’s decline may be his hurting his side, the condition is advanced towards death by Ivan’s superficial connections with others and with God. As he faces the fading of his life, the main character’s spiritual disconnectedness becomes apparent as he sees nothing but insincerity within the actions of his family and his doctors. His only comfort comes in Gerasim, who provides a beacon of kindness and understanding in a household surrounded by self-concern. As Ivan battles with the “cruelty of man,” which in the story is typified by a lack of human interconnectedness, he also battles with a perceived abandonment by God. He believes that God brought him to his state of torment and left him to suffer; indeed, Ivan’s acknowledged creator did effectively leave the sufferer, but only because Ivan distanced himself from any semblance of spirituality and instead grounded himself in the trifles of the earthly world and in a preoccupation with death. By worrying purely about the approval of his superiors and by adopting a moral-relativistic attitude towards his beliefs, Ivan succeeds in severing any connection to the metaphysical that is necessary for a healthy life. In his anger at God, Ivan reflects upon his desire to return to his pleasant normal life, yet he realizes that his life prior to his illness had not been what he had believed it to be. He quickly realizes that, because he was grounded in the conformity to the upper classes and in his own self-fulfillment, his life had been a waste.
At the climax of his illness, Ivan takes communion and becomes reconnected with God. In a symbolic alleviation of his pain by religion, the main character re-establishes his spirituality and thereby comes to the firm realization that his life was “all not the right thing.” Ivan accepts his life as such, and he then proceeds to rectify his great error by for once truly caring about his family. He reclaims the spiritual bond between him and his family and reaches out to God for understanding. Through this spiritual rebirth in God, Ivan can accept death and move beyond to light.
By ending his novella with Ivan’s salvation through a spiritual reconnection, Tolstoy demonstrates the importance of God and spirituality in life. The characters in the story all fear death and all waste their lives in a physical, material existence; they believe themselves to be happy and immortal, yet in actuality they are plagued by a concern for only oneself that produces a consuming fear about one’s standing in the world. By transcending a flawed material world and connecting to a redeeming spiritual world, Ivan is able to overcome that fear and receive Jesus’ promise of an end to death. By restoring his spirituality, Ivan effectively saves his life. (570)
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Papa Smurph--I think I mostly agree with you, although I'm not sure if the awakening happens because of or despite taking communion. I guess I see it as something more like his own soul connecting to something outside itself, but not so much because of the assistance of a church ritual. But your idea that he finally achieves a measure of peace only when his soul begins to respond to his situation seems very much to the point.
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