Summary of the chapters
In these chapters Ivan Ilyich moves to the other side of the table: the doctors do to him what he did to the defendants, and at home the illness is received as one more inconvenience he imposes on the family. One night he understands that the case is not one of kidney or appendix, but of life and death, and he begins to struggle not to think about it. In the third month, what torments him most is that everyone pretends he is only ill; the only exception is the pantry servant, who holds his legs and speaks of death as something shared by all.
Chapter IV: The Doctor and the House
Chapter summary
Ivan Ilyich Golovin begins to feel a strange taste in his mouth and a discomfort in the left side of his belly, and the bad mood it brings spoils the agreeable life of the house: the quarrels return, almost always started by him, at the table. Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina falls silent and makes a great virtue of it, until she demands that he see a famous doctor.
Analysis
Решив, что муж ее имеет ужасный характер и сделал несчастие ее жизни, она стала жалеть себя. И чем больше она жалела себя, тем больше ненавидела мужа. Она стала желать, чтоб он умер, но не могла этого желать, потому что тогда не было бы жалованья.
, Having decided that her husband had a dreadful temper and had made her life unhappy, she began to pity herself. And the more she pitied herself, the more she hated her husband. She began to wish that he would die, but she could not wish it, because then there would be no salary.
Praskovya Fyodorovna turns the patience she imposed on herself into proof of her own goodness, and self-pity feeds the hatred. The wish that he die runs up against money, and the frustrated wish irritates her even more. The narrator does not judge her: he shows that she feels unhappy precisely because not even her husband's death would save her, and that this hidden irritation increases his.
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Chapter V: The Night of Discovery
Chapter summary
Near New Year the brother-in-law arrives, and on seeing him he suppresses an exclamation. Ivan Ilyich looks at himself in the mirror and, through the door, overhears him tell his sister that he is a dead man, that there is no light in his eyes. He goes to the house of Pyotr Ivanovich, who has a doctor friend.
The doctor friend explains that it is a small thing in the appendix, which can be corrected, and he returns cheered. That night, alone in the room where he has slept since he fell ill, he imagines the appendix correcting itself and thinks it no longer hurts; he blows out the candle, and the old dull pain returns.
Analysis
Chapter VI: Caius Is Mortal
Chapter summary
Ivan Ilyich sees that he is dying and lives in continuous despair: he knows, but cannot grasp it. He tries to push the idea away as morbid and looks for the old screens that used to hide it, the court and the room he decorated, but the pain returns in all of them and finds him alone, before the curtain, thinking that he lost his life because of a fall.
Analysis
Chapter VII: Gerasim and the Lie
Chapter summary
In the third month, everyone, and he himself, knows that the only interest he arouses is in knowing when he will vacate the place. Opium and morphine bring no relief, and the needs of the body are a torment because of the indecorum of involving another person in them. Hence the consolation: the one who carries the chamber pot is Gerasim, a young, clean, fresh, always cheerful muzhik.
One day, too weak to pull up his trousers, Ivan Ilyich apologizes to Gerasim for the unpleasant task; he smiles, asks why he would not make an effort, since the master is ill, and, at his request, puts the master's legs on a chair and then holds them up high, where they barely hurt. From then on Ivan Ilyich sometimes calls him to hold them on his shoulders: the health and joy of others offend him, only Gerasim's calm him.
Analysis
Reading of the Chapter Block
Analysis