Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-qxsvm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-18T17:20:13.137Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Case of Ivan Ilyitch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Robert N. Wilson
Robert N. Wilson
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, College of Arts & Sciences, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB# 3210, Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599–3210, U.S.A.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Leo Tolstoy's short story, The Death of Ivan Ilyitch, is considered as a case history of a seriously flawed life and a consequently inept coping with death. Never having truly lived fully, never having been committed to passionate love or work, Ilyitch in his dying review finds his experience absurdly empty. His death comes to be seen as superficial and meaningless, like his life. It is suggested that people need to be educated for life's failures and death's inevitability.

Keywords

illnesscase historyfiction
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 115 - 124
Copyright
Copyright Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Wilson, A. N. (1988) Tolstoy, 19. Ballentine Books, New York.Google Scholar

2 Larkin, P. (1989) ‘Aubade’. Collected Poems, 208. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York.Google Scholar

3 Proust, M. (1982) Remembrance of Things Past, 2: 313. Random House, New York.Google Scholar

4 Tolstoy, L. (1886) The Death of Ivan Ilyitch.Google Scholar

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Blythe, R. (1984) ‘Death and Leo Tolstoy’. Characters and Their Landscapes, 58. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Orlando, Fl.Google Scholar

10 Quoted in Blythe R. Ibid. 49.

11 Tolstoy L. op. cit.

12 Yeats, W. B. (1951) ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. Collected Poems. The Macmillan Company, New York.Google Scholar

13 Yeats W. B. Ibid. ‘A Prayer for Old Age’.

14 Carlyle, T. (1833–1834) Sartor Resartus. Fraser's Magazine.Google Scholar

15 Waller, E. ‘On the Last Verses in the Book’.Google Scholar

16 Walker, S. (1985) ‘Patty Cakes and Poetry’. The Alalitcom, 20.Google Scholar