Ivan Ilyich Selfishness

"The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy, shows how the majority of society is selfish. Yet Tolstoy also suggests how even though there is so much selfishness in society, there are some exceptional people who do not follow social conventions and are the prime example of how people in a society should be. This paper will argue that being selfless is important in society and that people should deviate from individualistic behavior and concentrate more on collective behavior. Although a person should think about how to advance themselves in the social hierarchy, it should not be their only goal and people need to combine it with a more humanistic goal as well. In "I.I", the author implies how society is filled mainly with people who are self-centered; such as Praskovya, Peter, Schwartz and Ivan. In the beginning of the story Ivan's death …show more content…
His friends are not troubled that somebody who they cared about had passed away, and are just thinking of the advantages that it could bring to them in their financial and social status. As the story progresses Tolstoy takes the reader to the funeral where one of Ivan's friends, named Peter Ivanovich, meets Ivan's wife. She wanted, "to question him as to how she could obtain a grant of money from the government …but he soon saw that she already knew about that to the minutest detail, more even than he did himself"(Tolstoy 10). Not only his friends, but also his family didn't really care about him that much, as his wife is already discussing finances on the day of her husband's death. Tolstoy then reverses the chronology of the story and he