Every Man Dies Alone

Throughout most of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich I had been quite impartial to Ilyich's suffering. However, it really hit me on page 1443 when Ivan kind of went into a panic attack, its like he realized for the first time that he was going do die a painful and lonely death.

"When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing. Then where shall I be when I am no more? Can this be dying? No, I dont want to!...Whats the use? It makes no difference...Death....And none of them know it or wish to know it, and they have no pity for me...Its all the same to them, but they will die too!..I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them."

Ivan knows that at some point they will die too, but he is alone in the fact that it is he who is dying now and "In truth she did not understand". Thats the sad part. Is that the other people really cannot just understand what he's going through.

This passage reminded me of a book I had read before, called Every Man Dies Alone. Its about a Nazi during World War two who comes to this realization, much like Ivan did, around his death that he had lived his life all wrong, and that he will die alone. It was rather a depressing book haha.

Sorry for such the late post, last night for some reason it would not register that the age had loaded on the blog webiste and kept on reloading and realoading. It was driving me crazy so I just turned it off