We’ve just finished reading “The Death of Ivan Illych,” and we’ve been having a lot of discussion about the relationship between readers and Ivan Illych. Does Tolstoy want us to identify with him, as an “ordinary” man or does he want to set him apart?
I personally have trouble identifying with Ivan Illych. We meet so many other characters first: they are lively and having conversations , which is a big deal, since there are hardly any discussions in the story. When we do meet Ivan Illych, he’s dead, in a whole other world. Starting the book, I have the sensation that I’ve arrived in the story too late, and I missed the whole point, and I am denied access to this man who seems like I should have known him, looking handsome and dignified in death. No matter how little the living characters heed him, and how superficially they take his death, I can’t help but be far more invested in them than the dead man of title.
But of course, Tolstoy brings Ivan Illych “back to life” so to speak, and readers watch his whole life progress. But the telling of Ivan’s life feels like an obituary, almost deader than his funeral, full of facts about his career. Even his affairs are dull and feel long gone: we are far from Anna and Vronsky here! His marriage and children are hardly remarked, while Tolstoy forces the reader listen to trivialities: “He got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the paper, and then put on his undress uniform…” (267), and this goes on for over a full page. Tolstoy hardly gives us any quotations, and we are rarely granted access into Ivan Illych’s though process (until the accident). This is so different from “Anna Karenina” and “War and Peace” where we are allowed into almost everyone’s head to understand their perspective. Vassily, Karenin, and even Anatole are more flesh and blood than Ivan Illych. But of course, this all changes with Ivan Illych’s illness. He starts to feel human, especially in the doctor’s office, listening to mumbo—jumbo about his “floating kidney.” He starts to question his whole life, as if he’s sort of unfreezing and becoming a real, rounded-out character. I feel especially connected to Ivan Illych as he becomes distant with his family—I feel as if he’s becoming as distant from them as I am.
But that death scene is very distancing yet again. As we talked about in class, we, the living, cannot follow Ivan Illych where he is going, and that’s why it is hard to understand him, talking about the light and joy, and I find his mental state at the moment of death very alienating. The last line particularly pushes me away, even grosses me out: “He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.” This sudden external perspective, describing his death in physical terms, expels the reader from Ivan Illych’s mind.
I struggle to understand why Tolstoy puts a barrier between the reader and his main character, then lets them connect for such a brief point in the story, then wrenches them apart again. I understand why we can’t follow him into death—I mean, I don’t think even Tolstoy can do that. I certainly think that showing us “ordinary” human life from a distance makes us realize how trivial it can be, and certainly having Ivan’s death in our minds throughout the book has the same effect. Any thoughts and/or disagreement are welcome!
4 comments:
Oops, please excuse me for having added an 'l' to Ivan Ilych's name throughout this post. "Ivan Ilych" is the correct spelling.
MIght you be able to figure out why Tolstoy wants so much distance between the reader and Ivan Ilyich if you were to compare earlier depictions of death in Tolstoy's works with that of Ivan? Tolstoy is fully capable of making us see death from inside--for example, with Prince Andrei in W&PP. Or to lead us through all the feelings that someone witnessing death has--as with the death of Levin's brother in Anna K. Maybe if you were to think about the points of contact between these three deaths, you'd be able to come up with some interesting ideas as to why they need to be so different for Tolstoy.
I’m beginning to think Tolstoy's shift stylistic shift here comes from his thoughts published in "What is Art?" where he emphasizes the importance of clarity in art. Tolstoy is incredibly heavy-handed and judgmental in "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and I think it’s because he's so concerned with "infecting" readers with his exact moral message. Reading through Andrei's thoughts leading up to death, or even Levin watching his brother, I find myself asking, “Do I buy this? Does Tolstoy buy this? Or is the character not quite there yet? “ When Tolstoy's earlier works are full of characters with false epiphanies, and they can be really misleading for readers, at least misleading in the sense of preventing the reader from understanding Tolstoy’s intention. Tolstoy puts us into a character’s head, I often find myself agreeing with that character’s though process, because Tolstoy doesn’t have as much chance to intervene and point out –“Don’t believe it! This character does not get it!” –-which is basically what he does with Ivan Ilych. Paradoxically though, I feel a lot less involved (“infected” even) in Tolstoy’s work when he takes me out of the characters’ heads in order to spoon-feed me a message. Though, I bet Tolstoy would tell me that I am putting too much emphasis on the pleasure in having access to characters’ thoughts, but at the same time, its hard to take a meaning to heart when you haven’t struggled with it!
Molly, your response to Julie's post reminds me of Gustave Flaubert's dictum that an author ought to be invisible in his own writing, and also of his related criticism of Tolstoy for failing to be exactly that--invisible--and for moralizing so much. And when Flaubert expressed this to his good friend, Ivan Turgenev, he had not even read the post-conversion Tolstoy!
It is one thing to be inside the characters' minds, even as we know that they are Tolstoy's creations, and quite another to feel vividly that the author is right in there with you guiding your experience. And while his omnipresence is most visible in the post-conversion fiction, we already see this tendency in such early works as "Family Happiness," when Sergei Mikhailich (a pseudo-Tolstoy) is frequently inside Masha's head choosing her every thought.
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