The Role Of Failure In Death Of Ivan Ilyich

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What have I learned about failure? I believe there is much to learn from failure and much can be gained by failing. I have learned that we should look at the bright side of failure. Once someone starts looking at failure on the bright side and considering the positives that come out of “failures” they can successfully live a more joy filled life. Now I’m not claiming that once someone looks on the bright side of failures they will automatically become happy all the time and all their problems will be solved, but I am claiming that more often than not, their opinion on life will improve. This thought entered my mind while reading a poem by Elizabeth Bishop titled, “One Art”. In this poem, the character goes through a life of many losses and …show more content…
Two different people can look at one situation and interpret it completely differently. One could look at it as a failure and the other could look at it as a success. There are many things someone could take away from reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy and I think the subjectivity on failure is a crucial take away. The main character in the story, Ivan, is drawn to wealth and the upper class and mimicked every move they made from a very young age. He did everything to live the mirrored life of the upper class and ultimately failed out to live out a meaningful life from his own perspective. To everyone around him that wasn’t close to him saw him as a very successful and accomplished man. As Ivan approached the end of his life, he became increasingly dissatisfied. Ivan looked back at his life while touching the head of his son and saw it as a failure because he failed to live his own life and fill his life with human love, interaction, and compassion, and most importantly, selflessness. Although Ivan thinks of his life as a failure while others see it as a success, he doesn’t die thinking this. Ivan figures out the secret to living a full life and that is enough for him to die peacefully even though he previously failed. It is okay to fail; if you reflect and learn from your mistakes it is almost as good as succeeding. Granted that is not always entirely true, but I still think that goes along with failure being subjective. Failure does not have to be seen as failure as long as you learn from that failure and know what it takes to turn future endeavors into successes. The decision on if something is a failure or not is in the eye of the

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