BookBrowse Reviews The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

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As his death becomes a certainty, Ivan Ilyich is forced to come to terms with his mortality and confront all the unpleasant questions he never wanted to ask; most importantly, have I lived a moral and authentic life?

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Shortly after his religious conversion, Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy started working on a novella that took him two years to complete. The book, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, was finally published in 1886, and although it is far shorter than some of Tolstoy's better-known works, such as War and Peace or Anna Karenina, with only 12 chapters and 60 pages, it is by no means any less full in terms of philosophical and religious themes, sociopolitical commentary, and emotional weight. While writing this novella, Tolstoy was deeply influenced by his own fear and questions about death, morality, and life's meaning, making it one of his most personal works.

The book can be roughly divided into two parts: first, the life of protagonist Ivan Ilyich before the onset of his illness, and second, his declining health, final days, and eventual death. It opens with a flash-forward crucial for the structure, as this immediately sets the tone, preparing the reader for what's coming. Ivan's colleagues are gathered together discussing work matters when suddenly one of them announces Ivan's passing to the rest. After the initial shock, everyone becomes concerned with how this death will affect them personally, thinking about upcoming promotions, reassignments, and the inconvenience of having to attend the funeral. Ivan's wife and family are no less selfish, as they are shown to care primarily about the pension and how they can benefit from his death. Most strikingly, people seem to also feel some sort of relief. Tolstoy writes, "the very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't."

From there, the narrative shifts back to Ivan's life. A respected judge and civil servant, he lives a "most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible" life, constantly striving to climb the social ladder, please his superiors, conform to public opinion, and acquire material goods. Comfort, materialism, and appearances guide all of his choices far more than genuine feeling or moral reflection.

This well-planned life is disrupted by what he first considers a trifling accident. While hanging his new curtains, Ivan falls off the ladder, injuring his side. He dismisses the pain as no more than a mild annoyance, trusting in his good health and athletic body. However, as the pain slowly increases and the bitter taste in his mouth becomes more pronounced, he realizes he is seriously ill. Not even doctors can name or identify the specific cause, and instead give only vague answers and empty reassurances. As his health deteriorates further and the certainty of death becomes clearer, Ivan begins to see, first in others and eventually in himself, a life filled with selfishness and pretentiousness. He thus concludes that "he had not spent his life as he should have done," that "his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false."

Two characters stand apart from the rest. Gerasim, a servant who offers Ivan comfort by holding his feet up, helping him out of sincere compassion, and Ivan's youngest son, who expresses sorrow for his father's sickness because he truly loves him. With these characters, Tolstoy contrasts authenticity with pretentiousness and gives his own answer to the question, what does it mean to live a moral life?

Though the book is short and written in clear and accessible prose, the heaviness of its themes makes it by no means an easy read. It is devastatingly bleak. Tolstoy masterfully portrays death and the physical and mental decline of a man who knows he is about to die.

The novella also offers a keen, disturbing look at how socially successful lives are often profoundly hollow. Ivan has done everything expected of him. He has sought out and acquired status, money, and approval, only to discover, when faced with death, that "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." Much of the story also exposes the artificiality of some social relationships, showing how politeness and conventions can replace genuine care and honesty. The book's main themes, however, are how we view death and what constitutes a moral life (which I explore in more detail in the Beyond the Book).

As far as style is concerned, the book's prose is direct, restrained, and deliberately unornamented. This straightforwardness gives the novella its power, reflecting the rigid life of the protagonist while making his emotional unraveling and final acceptance more striking:

"He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. 'Where is it? What death?' There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light."

What makes The Death of Ivan Ilyich especially powerful for me, though, is its psychological focus. The main character's gradual realization that his life has been guided by false values, and that now it's too late to correct this, is portrayed with increasing intensity. His denial, fear, and desperation as he realizes that he is about to die feel painfully realistic too, with passages like "Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same" and "the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that same endless lie."

The only thing I didn't like while I was reading this book was how, at certain points, it comes across as a bit preachy and repetitive. I felt like Tolstoy was giving me clear answers instead of letting me come to my own conclusions. For example, Ivan's obsession with how he is perceived is presented again and again through similar habits of his, and the symbolism is a bit on the nose.

In the end, you do not have to agree with Tolstoy—but you do have to read this book. If only to be reminded that life is short, and that each of us must find our own answer to the question, what is a life well lived?

This review first ran in the January 28, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.