Theme Of Qing And Li In The Death Of Ivan Ilych

The Qing and Li in The Death of Ivan Ilych
The Death of Ivan Ilych, depicts an indifferent and selfish world, is a brilliant work written by Leo Tolstoy. Through this short novel, and through the mental struggle of Ivan Ilych before his death, Leo Tolstoy argues for the essentiality of authenticity and compassion of people. His thought resembles the central idea of the essay On the Childlike Mind written by Li Zhi, a Chinese philosopher from Ming Dynasty.
On the Childlike Mind argues for the importance of Qing over Li. Qing and Li are Chinese terms that cannot be fully translated by a single English word. Qing instead of being simply transferred as love, it refers to the emotions, including sympathy, authenticity and spontaneity. It is something …show more content…
When he went to college and got to know more upper class friends, he gradually lost his Qing and accepted their social value as well as behavior to help him fit in the upper class world. Though later, he was kind of successful in his career, he sacrifices his emotional world. After college, Ivan used to consider a good job; a high salary and a decent family are the only indications of a successful life. But when he was dying, he soon realized the importance of love, the compassion from others in his life. Thus, he began to hate all the others who treated him insincerely and loved to spend time with Gerasim, who is almost the only authentic and sympathetic man in his life. Gerasim, different from these upper class people in the story, cared for Ivan compassionately and treated him genuinely. Ivan’s idea towards Gerasim and the others forms a strong contrast: both in the form of these people’s background and in the form of these people’s quality. It is ironic that even a peasant who lacks of the amount of education would know to treat people with Qing, the government officials and the aristocrats with much higher education never act out of Qing. Thus it becomes reasonable for people like Tolstoy to question the meaning of education that these higher-class people received. Though these people lead decent lives, they never experienced the true love from others and also never offer their care to others. Their emotional world is empty as a cold machine. People’s life can be short or long, but none of human beings can bring the materialistic goods with them to the other world after death. The mind and the experiences of Qing are the only things that can allow people to leave the world with a smile. Though it is understandable that the upper class people face more materialistic seduction than the lower class, for they are