On Tolstoy and Condemnation

It is human nature to fear to death. As I stated both in class and in my Senior Speech, necrophobia is number one on most lists of Americans’ most popular fears. With the exception of Gerasim, basically every single character within Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich refuses to face his or her own mortality. Why is this? Of course, death is frightening. I fear It as well. What reason do we have not to fear it? It’s inevitable. We are unable to escape its grasp. I can easily relate to both Ivan’s and Peter’s fears.

And yet, the story seems to promote the acceptance of death and those who have the ability to look upon their own mortality without fear. Why should this fear of death be seen as a negative personality trait? I would condemn the rest of the characters far more for their narcissism, materialism, and their mesh of falsity they construct then for their simple fear of the unknown. Though, perhaps this is what Tolstoy is condemning: The fact that the characters ignore death (just as they ignore the severity of Ivan’s illness) despite the fact that it is inevitable. Instead of at least *trying* to come to terms with death (if they succeed is inconsequential), they ignore it all together. Perhaps this refusal to admit the inevitable is their flaw. Even I can admit -- most of the time, anyway -- that we will all, at some time or another, reach the end of our lives. I try not to ignore that fact.

Yet, though titled The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the novella revolves around the life he and his contemporaries led. It was not how he died, nor how he feared death, but the fact that he wasted his life purely with trivial matters that is the focus of the story. Perhaps this fear of death only comes from the realization one has not lived his or her life properly. Perhaps this is why no character can face it. Because no character can face the fact that his or her life has been lived poorly. Despite their riches and their positions, they are unable to look upon death because they cannot look upon their wasted lives.

In the end, it seems, Tolstoy’s novella about necrophobia seems not to be about the fear of death at all, but about the fear of having lived a life that was not worth the pain.

P.S. I would merely like to add that I rather enjoyed the thinning of the chapters that occurred throughout the novella as both the reader and Ivan traveled closer and closer to his death. It gave me the feeling that not only was time quickening, but also that time was running out.