The Death of Ivan Ilyich

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is Leo Tolstoy’s novella about an official whose terminal illness unsettles the assumptions of his respectable life. Beginning with the response to his death, the narrative returns to the career and household he had considered properly arranged. Illness reveals how little those arrangements can answer his deepest fears. The servant Gerasim’s practical kindness stands apart from the evasions surrounding him. The contrast makes compassion central to Ivan’s final reckoning with the life he has lived.