Everything Important Ceases to Matter

In the story education is another core value that was mentioned. He decided to study law in his early teens and to which he had excelled at his studies. He worked hard for his education and when he graduated he was qualified for the tenth rank of civil services. This core value has shaped the way Ivan lived his life because it is in law school that Ivan internalizes the values and mores of the upper-middle class that he will be part of as a practicing lawyer.

After getting his law degree, Ivan works as an examining magistrate in an unidentified Russian province and later on promoted to Assistant Public Prosecutor.

It is through education that Ivan was able to provide for his wife and secure a high paying job at 5,000 rubles per year. Social status is another important core value to Ivan. In the story, due to Ivan upbring, he never really had to work for anything. For example, after law school Ivan “receiving from his father a sum of money for his outfit, Ivan Ilych ordered his clothes at Sharmer’s”(Tolstoy, 1248) This type of lifestyle had influenced his outlook on how he should live his life.

In life, he would go on to choose his friends based on their social standing.

His conduct and worldview are wholly determined by the opinions and expectations of the elite class. This implies that Ivan, by conforming his conduct to the opinions of the upper class, is moving closer and closer to the fame.

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When Ivan finds a house for his family he was not very happy with the way it looks because it was not up to his social standard so therefore pride himself into buying the best, or most fashionable, furniture and other household necessities for his new home. This core value had negatively impacted on is life in the long run which had caused him the most prize position his life. When Ivan was hanging the drapes, he has a mishap on the ladder. He bangs his side against the window frame and is slightly bruised. The bruise hurts a bit but Ivan thinks nothing of it because he’s so wrapped up in preparing his new home. Ivan’s family moves into the new house, and they all seem quite happy with their new life, but his happiness was short lived because he eventually succumbs to his illness and died.

In the end of the story, Tolstoy us the quote ‘My God! My God!’ he muttered. ‘Again, again! And it will never cease.’ And suddenly the matter presented itself in a quite different aspect. ‘Vermiform appendix! Kidney!’ he said to himself. ‘It’s not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life and…death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and I cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Isn’t it obvious to everyone but me that I’m dying, and that it’s only a question of weeks, days…it may happen this moment.

There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I’m going there! Where?’ A chill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt only the throbbing of his heart”(Tolstoy) as a way to show that Ivan had come to terms with his mortality. Once he realizes that he is actually dying, however, he no longer can. And death changes everything. Ivan becomes isolated from the world around him. All that seemed to matter before stops mattering. Ivan’s death forces him to painfully re-evaluate his own life, illustrating Tolstoy’s belief that only death can reveal life’s meaning. In closing, Tolstoy teaches us that a successful life isn’t what we often think it to be.

Many of us tend to seek happiness in wealth and material things that’s the kind of life that Ivan Ilyich has led. But it hasn’t brought him happiness, because the things of this world are fleeting. It doesn’t matter how good they temporarily make us feel, they can never bring us true, lasting happiness. Leading a materialistic lifestyle would only allow was to live outside our means.