The works of Russian classical literature have gained a great deal of popularity around the world over many years. Their main characteristic is the stimulation of intense, often ambiguous feelings in the reader, which make him think. Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” was just such an example. The literary work takes the unflattering perspective of the hypocrisy and self-deception of the main character and his surrounding. This is especially evident in the analysis of the worldview of Ivan Ilyich in the course of the story. Therefore, this work seeks to support the point of view of duplicity and pretense in the protagonist’s character.
Before considering the problem of hypocrisy in the work of the great Russian writer, it is necessary to understand its essence. “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” is one of the main works of Leo Tolstoy, over which he worked for four years. The narrative begins with a description of the life of an indistinguishable man who works hard to get a promotion at work. One day, however, he begins to suffer from pain in his side, which then develops into a general malaise. With time Ivan Ilyich “becomes increasingly angry at those around him who cause even the slightest upset” (Hibbs and Hallam 476). In the end, the disease kills the protagonist, and he dies without ever knowing the cause because he goes to the medical specialist, but their interaction ends poorly.
The peculiarity of this work is that the author omits the story of the events that took place in the protagonist’s life until his last few months. This feature helps to focus the reader more on the main idea and message that the writer wanted to convey. Despite its comparative brevity, this work cannot be called insignificant or consequential. It raises acute social problems, not only in that time but also in the current time. Thus, one of the main issues is the problem of hypocrisy and the change in the worldview and perceptions of the man with a sense of approaching the inevitable end.
The sense of hypocrisy seems to run a thin thread through the entire work, affecting the main character and the other characters. Therefore, if the reader considers Ivan Ilyich’s colleagues as an example, when they learn of his death, they openly rejoice. After all, because of the fact that the place at work became vacant, they can get a promotion from their superiors. On the other hand, these people are clearly reluctant to go to the deceased employee’s funeral. The author notes, “his so-called friends, could not help thinking also that they would now have to fulfill the very tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and paying a visit of condolence to the widow” (Tolstoy 2). Despite the lack of desire, the colleagues went to see the protagonist off, as it is considered a decent thing to do.
The life of the protagonist can be divided into two main phases: before and after his illness. The primary motivator of his activity, to which he constantly adhered, was decorum. This aspect also directly concerned everything: work, family, and friends. Tolstoy constantly reminds the reader that the protagonist’s life is obscenely ordinary. It quickly identifies the stages that are considered the norm, which goes in the sequence of study, work, recreation with friends, and family, and building a career. This ordinariness even applies to his death, where the author describes, “the dead man lay, as dead men always lie, in a specially heavy way, his rigid limbs sunk in the soft cushions of the coffin, with the head forever bowed on the pillow” (Tolstoy 4). With this technique, the writer makes the reader think about the fact that someday such things can happen to everyone. Death is inevitable, and one must understand it and make the most of his opportunities.
However, hypocrisy was characteristic not only of the main character’s colleagues but also of Ivan Ilyich himself. Despite the fact that the man lived with the constant need to behave politely, squeezing his true feelings. Hence, he would pretend to communicate with other workers, secretly not wanting them to succeed at work. Ivan Ilyich, in the face of death, realizes that “reviewing his life, he concludes that what he has made around himself is nothing but death, that “hypocrisy”, “that deadly official life” (Jahanbani 43). This is also due to the fact that his main goal was to achieve a promotion at work, so ordinary and unimpressive was his life. Only towards the end of his life does the main character begin to realize his wrong attitude to life and what terrible people surround him.
The problem of duplicity also concerns the wife of the main character Praskovya Fedorovna. On the one hand, it may seem that a wife should deeply mourn the death of her beloved husband, but this was not the case. She observed mourning and behaved appropriately only for reasons of conscience and the correctness of such actions in the opinion of society. Furthermore, there is a feeling that if it were not for pressure from the main character’s wife, she would behave absolutely indifferently. Moreover, the sense of fulfilling a public duty, rather than one’s own desire, was pleasant to the wife of the deceased, which caused even greater hostility to the woman. Another hero who resorted to hypocrisy and lay in the story in relation to the main character and to life, in general, was the attending physician of Ivan Ilyich. The man deceives and refuses to tell the main character the truth about his illness. The medical specialist tries to avoid the conversation as much as possible, which makes the reader doubt his competence and genuine desire to help people.
Therefore, in the work of the great Russian writer Ivan Tolstoy called “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, there is a clear tendency to hypocrisy in the main character and in the people around him. So, after the death of the protagonist, all his entourage and even his wife go to see the hero off on his last journey, not to salute him or mourn. They do this only because they are afraid to meet the discontent of society and because it is so accepted. Moreover, the writer opens the reader’s eyes to how insignificant and empty the life of people like Ivan Ilyich, who follow the prescribed order. The work raises the themes of self-deception and alienation of an entire class of people. By mentioning these problems in the story, the author makes the work even more valuable and essential for world literature as a whole.
Works Cited
Hibbs, Stephen, and Simon Hallam. “In Search of Gerasim Moments (The Death of Ivan Ilyich).” HemaSphere, vol. 4, no. 6, 2020, p. 476.
Jahanbani, Marzieh. “The Denseness is the Absurd: The Life in The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” International Journal of Linguistics and Literature, vol. 9, no. 2, 2020, pp. 39-46.
Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Open Road Media, 2020.