What Is Realism? How Does Tolstoy's “the Death of Ivan Ilyich" Illustrate Mid-Nineteenth Century Realism? Compare It with Dostoyevsky's Realism.

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Introduction “ [Like Ilyich], we all die, and if we only live to live, to create and carve our own meaning into the universe, then life itself becomes ultimately meaningless and painfully insignificant.” In The Death of Ivan Ilyich Tolstoycombines a savage satire on futility and hypocrisy of conventional life with a powerful symbolic presentation of isolation in the struggle with death and hope for a final resurrection. This constant battle illustrates mid-nineteenth century realism. Realism is a “school of thought which greatly promoted the individual's own thoughts and feelings, as well as idealistic ideas of a perfect world”. Realism is the way in which a person views the world through the imagination of the individual who determine the form and content of an artistic creation. Realism deals with the emotions, and it also discovers what is mysterious and meaningful in life as observed in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Realism calls for an objective and detached assessment of everyday life. "[My life] had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible".In analyzing this description of Ivan's life, we see that Ivan has always done what is expected of him in the eyes of others. While Ivan believes his life has run easily, pleasantly, and decorously like it should, when he nears closer to death he see that in reality he had an unfulfilled life. Ivan's closest friends are more worried about who will be next in line for promotion when he is gone, and at his funeral they are more concerned over a bridge game than grieving for the loss; his friends and even his wife are incapable in feeling true grief. They are all completely consumed by themselves. Depression snuck up on me like old age will, forty times quicker. Ilyich manages to cover his depression by compartmentalizing his feelings from his thoughts and by becoming a workaholic. Obsessed

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