Leo Kanner

The Falsehood in Life and the Clarity of Death “Everything progressed until it began to approach the ideal he had set himself” (56). Ivan Ilyich lives his entire life according to the exact ideas and specifications that he expects of others and thinks others expect of him. He does everything, from marrying his wife to having children to decorating his house, the way that others have done in order to keep up the appearance of a happy, normal life. Ivan’s obsession with the way he appears to…

In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ivan could be considered as one who takes things for granted especially life. Ivan is known for his working and quest to get higher on the social hierarchy because that is the most important thing to Ivan. He was caught in being the best, that he forgot how to live life respectively. Ivan also went into marriage with his wife without truly loving her. Therefore at the end of the day Ivan realizes that he had spent his entire life doing everything wrong and because…

Leo Tolstoy’s masterful novella, The Death of Ivan Ilych addresses the formation and continuation of cultural norms on a superficial society, propelled by wide-spread acceptance of unjust, unfulfilling means to happiness. The piece follows the life, and death, of Ivan Ilych, a dreadfully mundane man in a overbearing society, disillusioned by severe sickness and left alone to deal with the consequences of such discoveries. Tolstoy’s work successfully integrates the life of a judge as the means…

The Positive Impact of Leo Tolstoy “I love many things, I love many people.” These were the last words of Leo Tolstoy. Throughout his entire life, Tolstoy lived by those words as he became whom the world knows as ‘the greatest writer of the 19th century’. Leo Tolstoy positively impacted society by teaching: to make a difference, expand one's social circle, and to keep an open mind. Leo Tolstoy taught to make a difference. For a man of the upper class, Tolstoy made a notable…

Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace deeply illustrates the lives of many characters. A compelling novel, Tolstoy maintains the characters’ verisimilitude through the use of body language and conflicts. The lives of Prince Andrei and Pierre -- two foil characters -- parallel each other as they embark on their journey towards a deeper self-understanding. Through the use of details, interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts, and the subtle juxtaposition of Prince Andrei and Pierre, Leo Tolstoy is…

"My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him," said Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest revolutionary leaders in history. Though some people, like Malcolm X, during the Civil Rights movement did not agree with non-violence, non-violence is always the smartest and safest way of protesting. This is what Robert Kennedy wanted to teach the people with his speech on the day Martin Luther King Jr. died: that violence does not lead…

Born September 9th 1828 into a wealthy Russian household, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy more commonly known as, Leo Tolstoy is renown as one of the greatest world literature prolific authors of all time. While only a child, Tolstoy’s parents died leaving it up to family members to raise him and educate him. His profound love of wanting to become a writer started at the age of twenty-three. According to Daniel Burt, Burt states that “no author has ever shown such a power of insight into the variety…

Ivan Ilyich’s Downward Spiral into Redemption The way Ivan gains redemption in the story is through a divine process that is able to save his soul. Through this redemption he comes to the understanding that he unwisely devoted his life to a value system that is devoid of actually accepting death as a possibility. He has lived a very simple, ordinary, and terrible life because he lives exactly as the value system of propriety and decorum wanted him to live and did not really live for himself.…

fiction book by Jon Krakauer about Christopher McCandless and his journey as he discovered who he was, independently from his family. For the majority of his youth Chris idolized non-conformist authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Jack London, and Leo Tolstoy who influenced his development and beliefs. When Chris begins his solo voyage, he utilizes their thoughts to guide him, and he discovered who he was aside from those authors he learned from. The character traits that Chris showcases in his…

antithetical to many of his beliefs in presented in Plato’s other dialogues, some continue to misinterpret the Republic as a serious political treatise. Plato’s preposterous construct of a “just” society has led some, such as German political philosopher Leo Strauss to view the Republic as an ironic work. Plato’s Republic should be read not as a political treatise, but instead as an extended city-soul analogy which provides an ancillary…