The Death of Ivan Ilych: The Life of Ivan Ilych [Warning: a personal view and opinion]

Throughout Tolstoy’s tale there is a man who slowly pulls apart his values in the last short while of his life. Some would argue that the last short while is in fact his life, and that the prior days in Ivan’s life could hardly be considered a life.

I bring this up now, I think, because of something going on in my own life right now. My grandmother went back into the hospital the other day with her cancer, and they say she won’t be coming out of there; hospice was sent. I was down to see her a few months ago, maybe two, and I found her to be very alive and interesting, but since I’ve heard that right after I left she began to lose her energy and very quickly fell to where she is now.

My father is flying out as soon as he can. My family was down there just a week ago to see her.

I don’t know how I feel about it. These things don’t seem to hit me the same as they do most people; death has always been something I’m comfortable with, but I’ve never had someone who I was very close with die—only acquaintances.

While spending time with my grandmother we discussed philosophies and medicine, and I feel she helped remove some of my parochial attitude. I am beginning to see all forms of medicine, such as: pills and treatments, much less valuable then other types, such as: therapy and homeopathic medicines. At least homeopathic and therapy you can have this faith in yourself, your own personal ideas. I feel homeopathic is very honest, I mean, it’s not telling you it’ll do everything you want it to do. And therapy is all about feeling yourself up and adventuring through your self. But pills and treatments keep saying what they’ll do, and who the hell are they to know? The hardly know anything. These months spent in philosophy books and literature has shown me a lot about knowledge. Descartes helps to say a lot. I may not respect entirely when he begins to make proof of God’s existence, because I disagree with his views, and don’t seem them as having valid supporting proof. But his ideas on knowledge, such as: flawed perception and knowing—I find much validity in.

Doctors can tell us what medicine will do, and say it’ll work, but it seems every year this pendulum of a field seems to just swing to the opposite. Every time a new idea appears in the science world it’s great for you, then a few months, years even, later they tell us that it’s terrible for us.

Jose Ortega y Gasset I believe had enough proof in his writing, Revolt of the Masses, to convince me that over the years the situations just get more complicated, and this is the reasoning behind why we should study history. It may not repeat, but at least we’ll have a simpler idea we can attempt to work off of for our solutions later.

I feel that I, personally and impersonally (referring to all of us), are guilty of making these advances which are just making the times more complicated. Where are the solutions? Are things ever solved? Sometimes everything looks like a knot and every time we try to untangle it we just add another kink and just complicate the problem.

I don’t trust medicine, and I don’t plan to ever. I’d rather die a death, than face an end which I sit all day drugged out of my mind feeling nothing. I see Ivan as having his life pre-cancer not truly being a life. He doesn’t begin to experience anything until he is dying, but when aren’t we dying? We’re all just a number of heart beats that’s not pre-determined quickly passing.

I don’t know where this post was trying to go, or what it was trying to say. But looking at my books last night I saw Ivan Ilych and have had him on the mind.

Here is the story

 

Michael