The Death of Ivan Ilyich Summary | Chapterly
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy: A Complete Summary "What if my whole life has been wrong?" Overview The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) is Leo Tolstoy's most perfect work and one of the greatest novellas ever written. In fewer than a hundred pages, Tolstoy tells the story of a successful, conventional man who falls terminally ill and, in the slow agony of dying, confronts the devastating realization that his entire life has been false. Ivan Ilyich Golovin has done everything right by society's standards. He has risen through the ranks of the Russian judicial system, married well, decorated his house tastefully, and maintained an impeccable reputation. He has also never once asked himself whether any of it mattered. His illness strips away every pretense and forces the question he has spent his entire life avoiding: has he truly lived? The novella is Tolstoy's response to his own spiritual crisis. After completing Anna Karenina, he fell into a depression so severe he contemplated suicide, eventually emerging with a radical Christianity that rejected all social convention. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the literary expression of that crisis: a work of art designed to wake the reader up. Plot...