Dr. Anderson
Death and the Meaning of Life
September 2013
Journal One
[This is an excerpt from an A journal, 4,000+ words. The student is reflecting, not summarizing. He documents and demonstrates his reading of the text. Even if no quotation is used, documentation is necessary. With Tolstoy, there were no page numbers, so he used chapters.]
August 30th
Having only read Tolstoy from a philosophical viewpoint before, I was pleasantly surprised with this short story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”. Something that I noticed throughout these first three chapters is that the root of Ivan’s unhappiness seems to lie in the lack of acceptance around him. Ivan seems to want his family to grasp the concept if his imminent death and respond appropriately. They don’t, however, and this fuels his bitterness. When he says “…no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position” (Tolstoy, chap. seven) I think that is a clear profession of what bothers him most about his illness. His sickness not only isolates him from other people like himself, but more than that, the people of his social class that surround him don’t make an effort to comprehend how his isolation must feel. Gerasim is the only one who doesn’t pretend that the circumstances are better than they are: “Gerasim alone did not lie” (chap. seven). That candid honesty is what brings Ivan some semblance of peace. It’s the mere acknowledgement of Ivan’s suffering that elevates Gerasim to a higher status in Ivan’s eyes.
It seemed to me that Ivan feels as if the people around him are ignoring not only his plight, but by association, Ivan himself. The inevitability of his death is being glossed over, and his family is pretending as if all will be well. Ivan’s impending death is the central aspect of his life, and when his family pretends that it is not even happening, it appears to result in the feeling that they are ignoring Ivan himself. He wishes to be “pitied like a sick child is pitied” (chap. seven) and no one is giving him that. His family is sugar-coating the severity of the situation, perhaps in an attempt to make themselves feel better about it, but in doing so, they are treating Ivan with borderline disrespect.
The daughter, Lisa, is “strong, healthy, evidently in love, and impatient with illness, suffering, and death, because they interfered with her happiness” (chap. eight). While this sounds so harsh and selfish on Lisa’s end, this was something that I understood perfectly. When I was a freshman in high school, I became good friends with a girl whose mother had cancer. I met this girl when her mother was in the late stages of her sickness, and for that reason, I never had the chance to meet the mother. One evening, while I was at a sleepover with my very best friend at the time, my father called me to tell me that the mother with cancer has passed away. Now, even though I had never even met the mom, I felt overwhelmed with guilt for having fun at this sleepover. I felt guilty for laughing, guilty for enjoying myself and guilty for being happy, simply because there were people close to me who were not able to do any of those things at the moment. I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend and the pain that her family must be feeling at that moment. It was hours before I was able to smile without feeling a pang of remorse. Lisa is tired with the sickness of her father, and I believe it is because she is tired of feeling sorry for enjoying herself. She is in the prime of her life, she is love, and she should be able to celebrate it. But how can she justify being happy and bubbly when her father is so ill? I doubt she resents her father, but I do believe that she is growing to resent the illness that is stifling her happiness.
One more part from this assigned reading really stood out to me. The concept of childhood being the only thing that isn’t worthless is a very interesting one. I have had extensive conversations with my father about how the memories of childhood are often idealistic. It seems to me that as we get older, our childhood memories become more and more pleasant. The good memories that I have of my childhood are absolutely perfect—there is no negativity tarnishing them. But when I mention the same memory to my parents, they will remember something about that same memory that isn’t good. If I say “oh, remember that time we had baby chickens for pets? They were so cute and fluffy!” my mom will say “don’t you remember how many times they bit your fingers?” I don’t remember the negative parts of those memories, only the good parts. I think Ivan is doing something much like this. It’s not a conscious decision to block out the bad things from our youth, but our mind does it anyway. The innocence of childhood lends itself to perfection of our memories. It seems that they took place in a flawless world where nothing ever went wrong, but we both know that is not possible. Ivan says that “the further he departed from childhood and the nearer he came to the present the more worthless and doubtful were the joys” (chap. nine). It seems to me that as circumstances become more serious, they lose their joy. We, as humans, tend to lose sight of the good when there is bad alongside it. As we grow up, the things we do take on more gravity, and each decision becomes more weighted. If we think too hard about everything, it becomes very easy to look over the happiness that can be found.
September 4th
The one word that I would use to sum up these six chapters we have read would be “bitter”. Ivan is so overwhelmed with bitterness that it almost overshadows everything else. He is bitter towards himself for not living his life like he could have, he is bitter at his family for pretending that everything will be okay, and he is bitter with the hope that comes and then is gone as quickly as it appeared. It has crossed my mind that perhaps some of the pain he feels is a result of the bitterness eating away at him. I know firsthand that anger can cause physical ailments, and I have often heard that bitterness does that same as it chews away at people’s insides. It would be perfectly logical that the intensity of the suffering he feels is heightened by the resentment that he harbors.
In chapter eleven, Ivan starts to look at his life in a different way. He confronts his wife and says “all you have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from you.” To me, this is a manifestation of regret. Regret seems to be a curse that accompanies terminal illnesses. With sudden deaths, such as car accidents, people don’t have time to reflect back on their life and think about what they could have done differently. There is no contemplation, and thusly, no regret. But when someone knows that their life is coming to an end, they have the opportunity to think about all that they did. In cases like Ivan’s, the period of contemplation is even worse, as there is nothing to do except lie in bed and reflect. Ivan has nothing to do other than think. There is nothing to keep his hands busy, nothing to keep his mind occupied. All he can do is sleep and think. He begins to see his life as one lie, and consequently, he starts to drown in regret.
September 6th
The first thing that occurred to me about this book was the small type. The second thing was that it is beautifully written. I just wanted to mention that. Now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the meat of this entry. Something is off about Veronika. She gives two reasons for wanting to commit suicide, and they don’t really fit together very well. The first reason she gives is that everything is the same: “Everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way” (Coelho 7). The second is that everything was wrong: “everything was wrong, and she had no way of putting things right” (7). If she had only said one of these reasons, nothing would have seemed strange, but pairing the two together is suspicious. The first reason exhibits boredom, but the second outlines a fear that arises from a lack of control. Here is where the problem arises. She states that everything in her life is the same, but that is a conscious choice. She is in control of her life, and she could shake it up if she truly wanted to. However, her second reason shows us that she is absolutely desperate for control. If she was desperate for control, then the stifling control she has held over her life should be a comfort to her. If she—as a woman desperate for control—feels that everything in her life is
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