What It Is
The fall of Ivan Ilyich Golovin from the little stepladder, in chapter III, when he climbs up to show the upholsterer how he wanted the drapery of the curtains in the new house, and the curtain to which he himself attributes, in chapter VI, the loss of his life. The fall is commonplace, told in one sentence in the middle of an enumeration of furniture; the blow to the side on the window-frame handle hurts and passes. The book returns to it three times, and at the end it trades the fall he catches himself from for another he cannot catch, into the hole of chapter XII.
Where It Appears
In chapter III, amid the decorating, he misses his footing and catches himself, as the strong and agile man he is:
Раз он влез на лесенку, чтобы показать непонимающему обойщику, как он хочет драпировать, оступился и упал, но, как сильный и ловкий человек, удержался, только боком стукнулся об ручку рамы., He climbed up a little ladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he wanted the drapery; he missed his step and fell, but, being a strong and agile man, caught himself, and only struck his side against the window-frame handle.
That evening he laughs at the upholsterer's fright, says that someone else would have died and that he only got a bruise, and writes to his family that he feels fifteen years younger.
In chapter V, on the night of the discovery, he retraces the history of the illness from the beginning, and the beginning is the fall: he struck his side, went on as before, and then the pain came.
In chapter VI, while arranging the album in the drawing room (The Decorated Room), Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina tells him to let the servants do it, that he will hurt himself again, and she, death, watches him from behind the flowers. He links the illness to the curtain:
И правда, что здесь, на этой гардине, я, как на штурме, потерял жизнь. Неужели? Как ужасно и как глупо!, And it is true, that here, on this curtain, I lost my life as in an assault. Can it be? How awful, and how stupid!
In chapter VII the lie around him reduces death to the level of visits, curtains and the sturgeon at dinner. In chapter VIII the footman opens one of the curtains to let in the morning, and after the visit of the famous doctor the room is the same again, with the same paintings, curtains, wallpaper and bottles.
In chapter XII, after three days in the black bag (The Black Bag), a force pushes him in the chest and side, and this time he falls:
Пролезть же ему мешает признанье того, что жизнь его была хорошая., What keeps him from getting through is the recognition that his life had been good.
What It Means
The fall does two things. It is the cause Ivan Ilyich gives for the illness, and so the measure of the ridiculousness he feels in chapter VI: to lose his life as in a wartime assault, but over a curtain, because of a room he wanted to match those of the best-placed people. And it is the first of two falls: in chapter III he catches himself because he is strong and agile, and in chapter XII he falls into the hole, and down there something shines (The Light).
The curtain is not only the place of the accident; it is the object that sums up his whole life: decoration, form, the drapery that only he knows how it should hang. Chapter VII and chapter VIII repeat it as part of the scenery that the lie protects. Two readings of the fall fit the text. In one, it is a real cause, and the book makes death arise from the most characteristic gesture of the life that killed him. In the other, it is the cause Ivan Ilyich chooses, because it is still an explanation of organs and accidents, of the same kind as the kidney and the appendix that he abandons in chapter V; the text never says what he has. In both, the fall that saves is the second, the one he cannot hold on to.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Death, Appearance and Reality.
- Themes of the work: Death, Appearance and Reality.
- Characters: Ivan Ilyich Golovin, Praskovya Fyodorovna Golovina.
- Neighboring symbols: the decorated room, because the curtain is part of the room; the black bag and the light, because the last fall is into the bag and ends in the light.