Summary of the chapters
The time of the novella shrinks with the patient: a day, a night, two weeks, two weeks, three days and, finally, an instant. The question Ivan Ilyich pushes away comes back closer each time, and what if I have not lived as I should?, and it is the defense against it, the chapter XII says, that keeps him from passing through the black bag. When he gives way, he feels pity for his wife and son instead of for himself, and in place of death he finds light.
Chapter VIII: The Day of the Doctors and the Theater
Chapter summary
For Ivan Ilyich Golovin the days are all the same: the pain, death, the only reality, and the same lie. The doctor arrives fresh and cheerful, with the air of someone who is going to fix everything, and Ivan Ilyich lets himself be examined knowing it is a deception, just as before he listened to lawyers knowing they lied. Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina complains that he keeps his legs on Gerasim's shoulders and brings the famous doctor, who again talks of kidney and appendix and, when asked, says there is a possibility; the sick man's look of hope is so pitiful that his wife weeps as she leaves.
In the evening the family goes to see Sarah Bernhardt, in a box he himself insisted on taking. They come to say goodbye: Lisa, indignant at the illness that gets in the way of her happiness, her fiancé Petrishchev, and the son, Vasya, the only one, besides Gerasim, who seems to feel pity. In the middle of the conversation about the actress, the fiancé looks at Ivan Ilyich and falls silent, and everyone falls silent.
Analysis
всем становилось страшно, что вдруг нарушится как-нибудь приличная ложь, и ясно будет всем то, что есть
, everyone was afraid that the decorous lie might suddenly break somehow, and that what it was would become clear to all.
The silence is not from pity but from fear: fear that without conversation the truth will be in plain view for all. The lie, which Ivan Ilyich feels as torment, is for them a protection, and it is decorous because it keeps the scene within the forms. Lisa breaks the silence by looking at the watch, her father's gift, with a smile for her fiancé that only the two of them understand, and everyone leaves.
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Chapter IX: The Black Bag and the Voice of the Soul
Chapter summary
Under opium, Ivan Ilyich feels himself pushed, with pain, into a black bag, narrow and deep, without managing to pass through. He wakes with Gerasim holding his legs, sends him away, and weeps like a child.
Analysis
Chapter X: The Wall and Childhood
Chapter summary
Two weeks later he no longer gets up and lies with his face turned to the back of the sofa. The voice inside says that it is death and that the torments serve no purpose; the more the illness advances, the more fantastic the kidney becomes and the more real death.
Analysis
Chapter XI: Suspicion and Communion
Chapter summary
Two weeks later Petrishchev asks for Lisa's hand, but Ivan Ilyich is worse and asks that they let him die in peace; to his daughter he says that soon he will free them from himself, and Lisa asks her mother what they are guilty of. The worst, however, is not the physical suffering: on the previous night, looking at Gerasim's kind, sleepy face, an idea had occurred to him.
Analysis
Chapter XII: The Three Days and the Light
Chapter summary
A scream begins that lasts three days, heard through two doors. Ivan Ilyich struggles in the black bag, pushed by an invisible force, and the torment lies in not being able to pass through.
Analysis
Reading of the Chapter Block
Analysis