In the novella “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” the realization of death in the future is the only way that Ivan Ilych is able to understand and see life as it truly is. Throughout his entire life, he never lived a full life; his job decisions, his marriage, and friends were all created without passion. Ivan led a hollow life until he grew ill from a seemingly innocent injury and began to the flawed indifference that society had. After his first doctor’s visit, he comes to the conclusion that “for the doctor, and perhaps for everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though for him it was bad,” (pg. 296).

From that day on, Ivan became more aware of the reality of his illness and the fact that his life previous to it was meaningless. I find it ironic that the arrival of death for Ivan is what forced him to realize the fake people and world in which he made a point of surrounding himself. He, who was once a man who took pride in the superficial and hollow social aspects of his life, was now “left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned…and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being,” (pg. 299). Even though he calls this illness a poison, I think that it actually was his one chance to break apart from the pathetic rut that he called life. Although in his eyes he was pitiful and somewhat deserted by his family—wife in particular—as a result of the illness, he ended up shedding his superficial layers and discovering the harsh reality of life under all of the fluff that he once enjoyed so much.

I started out looking down upon and lacking respect for Ivan and his life, but after learning of his “reality slap” and seeing him also hate the very fake and deceiving world that I despised so much, I ended up feeling pity and appreciating his change of person, despite how late it came in his life. I felt relief to know that finally Ivan had realized that everyone was going to die when he said “…they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them,” (pg. 301). That quote is the epitome of the contrast between the life Ivan left and the life he came into after his illness. It is clear that the rest of society has the conception that they will never die, as seen in Peter’s comments at the beginning, however; there is hope that not all are so naïve in the way that Ivan mentions this occasionally throughout the rest of the novella.