The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a story that reminds us of the true meaning of life, love, and gratitude in the face of death.
I once wondered what I would do if I died tomorrow. I was worried about my parents. I would need to send them a message of love and gratitude. The rest of my family and friends would also be sad. But the saddest person would be me. I thought that I would feel sorry for myself, knowing that I would die tomorrow, and that I would feel sorry for myself for dying tomorrow, because I am the person who loves me the most.
I began to wonder why I was so sad about the fact that I was going to die. I already knew that all people die and that I would die one day because I am a human being, so why did I suddenly feel this change in my state of mind just because it might be tomorrow?
I thought it might be because I was afraid of something I had never experienced. I have never experienced death. No one has. We think about how to live well, but we don’t think about how to die well. We try to maintain a healthy lifestyle every day, make various plans and achieve our goals, but we rarely think about the most important moment of all: the end. Why do we ignore such an important topic? Perhaps it is because we all want to deny death. People are interested in the issues of eating well, living well, being healthy and happy, so much so that the word well-being is not unpleasant to hear. However, dying is not something that can be done at will. All risks exist, both internal and external, and sometimes people can die suddenly without knowing the cause. So is there really a way to die well? The answer can be found in Leo Tolstoy’s novel.
It seems that the values that people sought in Leo Tolstoy’s time, when well-being was not a trend, were similar. The novel’s protagonist, Ivan Ilyich, was a competent judge who led a happy and refined life by working, marrying a beautiful woman from a wealthy family, having children, and spending his free time playing cards with friends. That is, until he contracted an incurable disease.
Ivan Ilyich, who lived with pride and without the slightest remorse, at first pretended not to know about his illness. He convinced himself that he would get better if he followed the doctor’s advice and lied to himself that he was not sick. In this way, Ivan Ilyich prepared for his death. However, this method caused Ivan Ilyich even more pain. His physical pain was clearly getting worse, and the mental pain that came with it only added to the suffering. I had a question here. Perhaps Ivan Ilyich found it difficult to endure the increasing physical pain. But Ivan Ilyich was more afraid of dying and more desperate about the fact that death was approaching. When a person dies, the pain disappears, but I couldn’t understand why people are so afraid of death.
But when I think about it, isn’t death so scary because it’s not just the end of life, but the end of everything we love? The end of our loved ones, the accomplishments we’ve dedicated our lives to, the little joys of every day – perhaps the fundamental reason we fear death is the separation from all of these things. In the case of Ivan Ilyich, I think it was difficult for him to accept the sudden separation from everything he loved in life. Another reason we may fear death is that we don’t know what life is like after death. The uncertainty of what awaits us after death can be a great source of fear for people, no matter how natural it may be.
However, looking back at the life of “Ivan Ilyich” before he became ill, I could see this. When “Ivan Ilyich” was in law school, he repeated things he found disgusting and turned a blind eye to the absurdity of it all, to the point where he no longer felt disgusted with himself. The more he ignored the absurdity, the greater it became, but he continued to fool himself and live what he thought was a noble life. This is the way he died. Just as he could not admit that he was not a noble person but an absurd and ugly person, he could not bear the fact that his illness was not getting better but was heading toward death. In other words, he was living and preparing for death in the same way.
As the pain increased, Ivan Ilyich asked God what he had done to deserve such a trial. When death finally came to him, he examined whether he had lived a good life. He had lived his life thinking about living well, but he had never really paid attention to whether he was living well. It was only after he felt the pain of death that he realized what true happiness was.
Life is a series of moments, but death is one moment. People think about how to live well while they are alive, but they do not think about how to die. We think about what we can do and what we can achieve, what values we can gain, and what kind of happiness we can live with. We do not feel the importance of death because we do not see where that moment is, and it is a fleeting moment. But even though we cannot see where it is, death is definitely there, and since the way we die and the way we live are the same, we must consider death when we think about how to live.
“Ivan Ilyich” was the only person among the people around him who comforted him, and he found comfort only in his servant “Gerasim”. The people around him pity Ivan Ilyich, who is dying, but Ivan Ilyich feels uncomfortable with the people around him, who act as if death does not exist for them. The people around Ivan Ilyich also try to live happily, but they have never thought about death. Even I, the reader of the novel, thought that Ivan Ilyich’s death had nothing to do with me. Instead of sympathizing with him, I observed and criticized his life. I was no different from Ivan Ilyich and the people around him. This is the answer to the question I asked at the beginning. Maybe I will forget about death the moment I finish reading the book. But whenever I think about happiness, I want to prepare for death differently from Ivan Ilyich, by thinking about happiness.
After all, we try to achieve too many things and pursue too many values in our lives. But sometimes we need to stop and think about what kind of life I really want and how I want to leave it in the end. By facing death, we will finally understand life in the true sense.
