It is important to note that the concept of death is one of the critical and philosophical ones. Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Throughout the storyline, Ivan Ilyich’s opinions, thoughts, and understandings of the reality of life and its end evolves through realizations of his own limitations.
One of the most initial clues a reader can get about how Ivan Ilyich deals with the idea of death during his life is from the description of the character’s life itself. The author writes, “Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” In other words, he was a clear conformist and simply followed the societal rules, which means he had no opinions and thoughts of his own analysis and critical thinking. Like most people in his surrounding, Ivan was either not concerned with death or viewed it as an abrupt end with no implications. The major shift in his thinking about death can be observed when he states, “it is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent, life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done, and there is only death.” Therefore, Ivan was no longer dismissive of his own mortality because all the noise was gone.
The prominent highlight of Ivan’s understanding of death is revealed during his actual death, when “suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder to breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom was a light…Just then, his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bedside.” He reached an epiphany by finding meaning in the spiritual element of closeness to his son, religious connotations, and the continuation of his journey after the end.