Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
1. How does the scene after Ivan's death set us up for the rest? What attitudes have you formed about Ivan, his family, his friends/society?
2. Where does Ivan's life take a drastic turn?
3. What ills (physical, emotional, social) cause Ivan's sickness and death?
4. How do the presence of Gerasim and Volodya influence the story?
5. Look closely at sections 3 and 4; from the descriptions and narrator comments, determine what attitude Tolstoy wants us to have toward Ivan. Do your attitudes change by the end of the story? If so, where? If not, what still holds?
6. About one-third of the way through section 8, we shift to present tense; what is the effect of doing so?
7. After finishing the story, why do you think Tolstoy begins it as he does? How does the sequence of events affect the message?
8. Of all the characters in the work, who learns the most from Ivan's death? why?
9. How does Ivan's plight compare/contrast with Job's? (see section 9, especially)
