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Tory Larkin

Dr. Venetia Pedraza

ENGL 2333-065

30 April 2021

A Psychological Critique of Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych”

Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” develops as an intriguing work that adopts an

exemplum genre that seeks to derive a moral lesson to the reader. The story is widely considered

as one of the earliest novellas to be written, and through Ivan’s story of life and death, the author

established a psychological narration on the inevitability of death and the right to life. The book

was written after Leo Tolstoy’s “dramatic spiritual transformation” experiences in which

developed from an earlier work, "The Confession," which is believed to be a subtext of its

writing (Matual, 1981). This paper develops a psychoanalytic critique of "The Death of Ivan

Ilych" to assess some of the unintended messages of the author and how the work and its

characters reflected the author’s experiences.

In Tolstoy’s work, the narration of Ivan’s story begins with an announcement of his death

in a heated conversation during a break on an ongoing hearing of Melvinsky's case. Members of

the court and the prosecutor are gathered in a room in the court's building, and after reading a

newspaper notice of Ivan’s death and funeral announcement, the conversation shifts into events

leading to his death. Throughout the first chapter, the reader develops an overview of the last

days of the main character and contrasting attitudes of different acquaintances of the character

toward death and mortality. From the second chapter, the story shifts to over thirty years earlier

to highlight the past life of the main character, experiences, and attitudes toward life. Ivan grew
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up in a family of three sons as an average person, but as he attended Law School, he assimilates

a life of people of high social status. After the reformation of the judiciary, he becomes an

examining magistrate and begins to attain the status he sought until he gets Praskovya, his wife,

pregnant. He dwells on work and abstains from his family due to changes in family life and his

wife's behavior. He focuses on social acceptance through opportunities to scale his career as a

person of high social status.

From an introduction of Ivan’s early life seeking to grow himself within the high social

status, he slowly learns how achieving that fate is dependent on his superiors. When he misses a

promotion, he develops a sense of injustice and moves his family to the countryside. He travels

to St. Petersburg seeking a higher-paying job, which he finds, and he invites his family into the

city. Within his perception of an overwhelming life, he decides to buy and furnish the house

before his family arrives. He stumbles and bangs his side against the window frame but doesn’t

suffer serious injuries and ends up enjoying a life he's made for his family in the city. However,

after some time, he develops some serious pains, which begin a series of discomfort in his life.

Various doctors can't provide a clear diagnosis of what ails Ivan, and at this moment, he realizes

his vulnerabilities and how his condition isn’t about his health but his life.

As Tolstoy’s story of Ivan takes a twist, the author introduces Gerasim’s character that

completes a perspective that he seeks to establish throughout the story in the seventh chapter.

Ivan's condition is arguably at its worst, and Gerasim appears as Ivan’s butler’s assistant.

Gerasim's main task is to clean out Ivan's excretions from his chamber pot, and the fact that

someone else has to perform this task tortures Ivan (Urban, 45). Gerasim's part in the story,

however, develops the idea of compassion to the reader and how it influences Ivan's approach to

life when he's very dependent on other people in life. As Ivan faces death, he draws back to his
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young self through his upbringing and begins to see how he ruined his chances to be happy with

his family for material things of the world.

Similarly, his early interactions with Gerasim manifest a shift from an individualistic

perspective he portrays throughout the story. When Ivan calls Gerasim and says, “I think this

must be unpleasant for you. You must forgive me. I can’t manage,” (Tolstoy, 795), Urban

believes it sounds a little courageous but derived from a self-consciousness betrayal (Urban, 46).

At this moment, we witness a shift in how Ivan views himself, his life, and his journey through

the process of death and its inevitability. Throughout the rest of the narration, Tolstoy develops a

psychological representation of his spiritual experiences to show Ivan’s regret of how he shaped

his family and how he’s disconnected from it due to the perception of life he taught his wife and

son.

From David Matual’s description of Tolstoy’s domestic life after his spiritual

transformation and devotion to theological studies, reading the story reflects on how he sought to

address his own plight in work. By symbolically using Ivan's experiences with “the black sack”

in the story and Gerasim developing as the second major character, the author established how

his later transformations manifested his perception of life beyond the viewpoint of his close

family members. Towards the final chapters of the story, Tolstoy manifests his final

understanding of life against his earlier thoughts and how the inevitability of death shapes his

character development of Ivan. Similar to Ivan’s later realization of the impact Gerasim poses to

his own life and acceptance of his death, the author reflects the influence of his spiritual

transformation on his own life. He manifests that his faith will outlive and hopes it will influence

the perceptions of those close to him as Gerasim did in the first chapter of the novella.
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Works Cited

Matual, David. "The Confession as Subtext in The Death of Ivan Il'ich." International Fiction

Review (1981).

Tolstoy, Leo. “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” Trans. Peter Carson. (n.d.).

Urban, David V. "Gerasim's Compassion in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich." Resuscitating

Paideia: Reading Literature for Wisdom 1.1 (2015): 5.