47 pages • 1-hour read
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Ivan Ilyich experiences “a queer taste in his mouth” and “some discomfort in his left side” (269). As his physical discomfort increases and his temper ignites, confrontations with his wife become frequent, and she wishes he were dead.
The nagging discomfort in Ivan Ilyich’s side becomes a constant ache. After multiple consultations, doctors cannot agree on a diagnosis. Even worse, no one answer directly whether his condition is fatal. Feeling dismayed when his wife and doctors downplay his increasingly serious condition, Ivan Ilyich tries homeopathic remedies and even considers faith, until he becomes alarmed by his own intellectual feebleness of this last-ditch effort.
The rest of the world continues its regular routines, and Ivan Ilyich can see that his condition and complaints annoy others because his suffering carries with it a gloom that everyone wishes to avoid. Ivan Ilyich tries to follow the orders of his doctors, though they sometimes contradict one another. His wife, however, accuses him of being incapable of following prescriptions.
Chapter 5 Summary
Ivan Ilyich’s brother-in-law visits and immediately notices Ivan Ilyich’s physical deterioration, describing Ivan Ilyich as a dead man with no light in his eyes. His doctors are still unable to agree on a diagnosis. He visits yet another doctor, this one recommended by Peter Ivanovich, but ultimately Ivan Ilyich reaches the realization that he is dying: “It’s not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life and […] death” (278).
Ivan Ilyich’s realization that he is dying brings on philosophical questions. He reflects on the injury that started his discomfort and the gradual decline he’s experienced, wasting away slowly and fixated on minutia about his appendix and kidney ailments, “and all the while here is death” (279). His attitude toward his wife becomes more malignant, and he struggles not to push her away when she asks after his health and kisses his forehead.
Chapter 6 Summary
Ivan Ilyich knows he is dying and now lives “in continual despair” (280). He reflects on a syllogism from Kiesewetter’s Logic on the mortality of man: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal” (280). Caius is not a real person with ideas and memories, though, and Ivan Ilyich struggles with the concept of his own mortality. He tries to distract himself with work, but the gnawing pain in his side is relentless. He begins making mistakes at work, and no matter how hard he tries to pull himself together, it continues to distract and terrify him.
Something that Ivan Ilyich now thinks of as It remains a vague presence penetrating Ivan Ilyich’s days. He tries to distract himself from It by rearranging photographs and ornaments at home. His wife urges him to let the servants move things around so he won’t hurt himself again, and Ivan Ilyich reflects on “how terrible and how stupid” it is that he is losing his life over hanging a curtain (282).
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
The pace of the plot slows significantly as Ivan Ilyich’s health declines. This structural change reflects the pace of his thoughts—for most of his life, he did his best to avoid introspection, focusing on surging ahead professionally. Now, however, as he approaches death, he has the time and the sudden inclination to ruminate.
The symbolism of Ivan Ilyich’s fall continues as the injury’s effects spread throughout his body. What has been hidden on the inside is now revealed; for example, his rotting breath is a physical manifestation that his rotten interior can no longer be masked. Doctors cannot help because they are looking for a concrete cause of infection or illness—but what is debilitating Ivan Ilyich is psychic in nature.
Tolstoy uses Ivan Ilyich’s dawning realization of impending death to have his main character pose philosophical questions that he does not answer. Instead, the text encourages readers to explore. Adding to the ambiguity is Tolstoy’s decision to shift from referencing Ivan Ilyich’s pain as a concrete sensation to referencing an unspecified It—an existential dread and horror never actually named, but implied to be some combination of pain, death, knowledge of death, and fear of death. Ivan Ilyich, a literal and shallow man, cannot grasp larger questions of mortality. Though he wants to imagine that he is different from the fictive Caius, whose only two-dimensional existence is within a logic proof, we see that Ivan Ilyich has not made himself that much more three-dimensional during this productive years. He is missing the small, intimate details of life—connections to friends and family, memories of meaningful accomplishments, and the pursuit of passions.
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