Status Updates From The Death of Ivan Illych an...

A non-outshiningly typical reader with nationally median literacy cannot fight the feelings he was coerced to feel by Joyce's montages of city-caressing anecdotes in Dubliners, even while the emotions of Tolstoy have interlaced and mostly substituted the melancholy of his last read. The Death of Ivan Ilych's centerlining chapters pose the same curiosity, whether dying is the end all things or the start of others.

Previously materialized and sensorial - although never once synthetic, Leo (addressed by his first given name due to matured intimacy) has moved to the physicality of faces; not the mere simplicity of smiles and frowns, but them having their funeral, buried in palms and plain-colored hankerchiefs, the way mustaches and crow’s feet dancing grievously at the bass vibrations of the human owners’ tragic tunes.

Cushioning the polar-cold-pillow descriptiveness of Tolstoy’s emphasis on objects that define lives, he also makes the time and blood-oath contract of a tragic bond for every fallen soldier he has diven into the mundane and muddy traumatized army routine of. When a troop, a comrade, an old lover of unadulterated adult innocence - or what was left - falters at a bullet and its ricocheting sadness, the losses kill.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Chapter 4

Ivan bought a house, found a new position, and life is going great for him! I have a feeling things are going to change next chapter…