”When they had gone Ivan Ilyich seemed to feel easier; the lie had gone, gone away with them — but the pain was still there. That same pain, that same feeling of dread made sure that nothing was harder, nothing easier. Everything was worse.”
When I first read this book back in 2018, I was mesmerised by it. Captured by the dark, foreboding truth that death will eventually catch up to the main character with no real way to stop it. I was a lover of tragic stories, even then. And it was such an interesting feeling to read about a story on how someone reaches this point in their life.
Re-reading this book, though, made me realise just how classics can be boring. It’s true that the way the story was laid down was absolutely realistic. It was painful every which way I read it. However, despite being such a short book, it felt so dragging. Perhaps it’s the thematic that made it this way and with that I say that it made the book perfectly effective.
In talking about death, there’s nothing to look forward to— unless, maybe, if it was a beautiful death. But this one wasn’t. So, where does the ”dragging” became an effective act? It’s in making us feel the dread, agony, and desire to finish it all. It was a nightmare to read how someone who worked hard to achieve where they are is eventually consumed by the grief of illness and the fear and desire to just die.
Tolstoi created the perfect atmosphere for his book and it made us see death in broad daylight. He made us experience what it feels like to reach one of the darkest part of life and he effectively slithered his way down our skins. Giving myself time to digest the book and the ideas behind it made me love it even more. I definitely appreciate the slowness (or, at least, the feel of it) of the story. It’s still one of the short books I’d love to look back to.
