Well...You Could Have at Least Cried at the Funeral!

Selfishness is a constant theme in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”. Throughout the story, characters continually prove that more often than not, people are more likely to worry more about themselves and their own problems. Ilyich too is selfish throughout his entire life. Unlike the others, however, Ilyich suffers because of his selfishness. Tolstoy uses Ilyich and the characters around him to illustrate the damaging effects of selfishness.

From the very first chapter, we see that the people all around Illyich care more about themselves than the dying Ivan. One example of this is Peter Ivanovich and Ilyich’s other “friends”. You would expect a dead man’s closest friends to be grieving and inconsolable after their friend’s death. But alas, no. There are much more important things, like bridge, for them to worry about. Peter and the others care much more about how his death affects their own lives. After all, their positions in society will change and they will have to go through the grueling agony of consoling the widow.

Ah yes…the widow. Of all people in the entire world, we would most expect her to be crushed by her husband’s death. However, she too is more worried about how his death affects her own life. She asks Peter if she can find a way to get more widow’s compensation and laments over how hard the last three weeks of his life were for her. In the later chapters that take place before his actual death, she again isn’t sympathetic or concerned for him. During much of that time, in fact, she is impatient for his death and only feigns worry for him. Again the people closest to Ilyich fail to care about him even in his dying days.

Ilyich, too, is a selfish, uncaring character but unlike the other characters, he is hurt by his selfish behaviors. In the descriptions of his life, Tolstoy shows that Ilyich also doesn’t put in the effort to worry about other people. He never truly seems to care about anyone else. He doesn’t marry his wife for love and later doesn’t put in the effort to fix problems in their relationship. Like his friends, Ivan won’t do anything uncomfortable or unpleasant even if it is to help someone he supposedly cares about. By the time Ilyich figures out his mistakes, he is too isolated and sick to repair the damage. When he dies, he is lonely and full of regret. He only wishes for someone to care about him and pity him, but with all that he has done, nobody does. Not only does this show the consequences of his own selfishness but also the selfishness of the people around him. Ilyich, however, is the only one we see suffer for his selfishness. Tolstoy uses him as an example of how selfishness creates loneliness in the end. Even though he uses many characters to show the ugliness of human selfishness, Tolstoy uses Ilyich as the specific example of its consequences.

In the entire story of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstory creates a pattern of people who are extremely selfish to warn readers away from being selfish. He starts by creating a dislikeable cast of secondary characters who only care about themselves even in light of their friend’s death. Next he presents Ilyich’s life story and shows how his selfish behavior eventually lead to his suffering at the end of his life. By presenting Ilyich as the selfish characters who suffers and falls into a lonely death, Tolstory warns readers that selfishness is one of the most damaging flaws for anyone to have.