Death Of Ivan Ilyich And Finding Redemption

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a book by Leo Tolstoy that talks about how Ivan Ilyich died, why he died, and how he lived. The prompt given focuses more on how he lived, and how he could have lived a better life. The main characters are Ivan Ilyich, his family, and his coworkers. Ivan lived a fake life, but he did not realize it until it was too late. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines redemption as, “The action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.” Although Ivan did not have a lot of time to live out his redeemed life, he was nevertheless redeemed from his fake like, which includes his marriage and his friends, by an epiphany at the very end of his life. Ivan was redeemed from the staggering inexperienced doctors. Ivan thought that only the well-renowned doctors could cure him from his unknown disease, but he could not have been more wrong because not even they could help him. “For Ivan Ilyich only one question mattered: was his condition dangerous or not? But the doctor ignored this inappropriate question. From the doctor’s point of view it was an idle question and not to be discussed”, this, the doctors denying him, happened over and over — Ivan being denied an answer to the question that was of utmost importance to him. The doctors are supposed to cure the patient — they did not even accomplish this, and meet the patient wants/needs, which they could neither achieve.

This text clearly shows how the doctors completely ignored Ivan’s question because they thought that it was “inappropriate.” First, Ivan was also redeemed from his fake friends and his family who were a hoax. His marriage was going to shambles; it was never off to a good start because Ivan was not even in love with Praskovya Fyodorovna at first, “To say that Ivan Ilyich married because he loved his bride and found her sympathetic to his view of life would be as incorrect as to say that he married because people of his society approved of this match”. This conveys that Ivan did not marry Praskovya because he loved her ;rather, he married her because “society approved.”

Second, Ivan’s so called friends were not actually his friends, but they were just stoked to get his job rather than mourning his death. This is portrayed on page 2, “So that, on hearing of Ivan Ilyich’s death, the first thought of each of the gentlemen assembled in the office was of what this death might mean in terms of transfers or promotions of the members themselves or of their acquaintances”, This excerpt depicts that the first thought of Ivan’s “friends” was to see who got Ivan’s job. These examples demonstrate Ivan’s need for redemption from his phony friends and family. Lastly, Ivan needed redemption from himself. Ivan worked in the court for his job, but his life consisted of nothing but fakeness, lies, and deception. Ivan did not realize that he was living a fake live until late in his life while he was talking with his soul. His soul kept asking him, “What do you want? How do you want to live? asked the voice of his soul. “I want to live as I did before, nicely and pleasantly? Then Ivan started to figure out what that actually meant; he tried to reminisce what memories were actually pleasant. He concluded that his only pleasant moments were in his childhood”, this portrays that he did not live a “pleasant” life as he said “as I did before” which is when he describes his life as nice and pleasant.

Ivan was redeemed at last in the last two pages of the book, which right before he died. “He sought his old habitual fear of death, and could not find it. Where was it? What death? There was no more fear because there was no more death. Instead of death there was light. “So that’s it!” he suddenly said aloud. “What joy!” … “It’s finished!” someone said over him. He heard those words and repeated them in his soul. “Death is finished,” he said to himself. “It is no more.” He drew in air, stopped at mid-breath, stretched out, and died”, this reveals that when he died he was redeemed from all of his problems because it clearly states that “Instead of death there was light,” before this Ivan was in agony, but now he is saying “What joy!”.