Happiness In Leo Tolstoy's The Death Of Ivan Ilyich

Shiny Happy People People believe that in order to achieve happiness they must surround themselves with pointless material goods and children to carry on their legacy, leading instead to an empty life. Such people ignore the philosophy of life and the soul’s true desire, as taught by philosophers such as Epictetus in his manual, The Art of Living. The character of Ivan Ilyich in The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy is no exception. Ivan Ilyich represents a life in which happiness is not achieved, though if Ilyich had followed Epictetus’ teachings of living simply, understanding mortality, and living truly, he would realized the emptiness in his life. Ivan Ilyich lets his life be one that submits him to please his family and peers, which …show more content…
(Tolstoy, 9)
The highly placed people he cares so much to please do not end up caring for him at his death. His friends at his funeral were simply glad “…that this had happened to Ivan Ilyich and not to him…,” (7), absorbing themselves in their own selfish tendencies and embarking themselves on the same miserable path that Ilyich took. Epictetus teaches against such manners of …show more content…
Epictetus teaches: “You would be foolish to wish that your children or your spouse would lie forever. They are mortal, just as you are, and the law of mortality is completely out of your hands,” (21), stating that at any moment a person can pass away and that death is a force of nature that no human can control. Ilyich does not believe he can die from his foolish accident: “By an effort of imagination he tried to catch this kidney and stop it, fasten it down; so little was needed, it seemed to him,” (Tolstoy, 29). It is during his final moments that he accepts his mortality, for he reflects on his life and realizes that he did not live to his full