Leitmotif

A word, phrase or image that returns several times throughout the work, tied to a character or an idea, and gains meaning with each return.

In The Death of Ivan Ilyich

and what if, in fact, my whole life, my conscious life, was not "that"?

The word "that" appears here in quotation marks, as the name of what life was not, and it returns in the last chapter, where one can still do "that." The same term links the suspicion to the discovery.

Chapters VIII to XII: Death, Ivan Ilyich

He searched for his usual fear of death, the one from before, and did not find it. Where is it? What death? There was no fear at all, because there was no death either. In place of death there was light.

Chapters VIII to XII: Death, the narrator