Who is Ivan Ilyich?

Who is Ivan Ilyich? What is his professional and personal life like up to the move to Petersburg. What are his motives? How does he make decisions? What is the narrator’s attitude toward him?

Ivan Ilyich was a well-mannered and intelligent man with a pleasant disposition. He was the middle child of a family of three boys and one girl. He was unlike his older brother in that he was not as meticulous or formal and unlike his younger brother in that he was not as presumptuous. Ivan was a member of the court justice up until his death at the age of forty-five and he completed his duties mercifully. He was a well-liked and respectable man—never one to incite or stir arguments and never one to fulfill his tasks without optimum effort and caution. Ivan was always one to use the proper decorum in the proper setting. He had good judgment, especially when it came to his job. He always fully examined the case in order to not miss any crucial details and to maintain a fair investigation. Tolstoy made reference to how Ivan liked to dance, displaying to readers that he was also fun loving and did not take everything too seriously. In fact, it is through dancing, Tolstoy said, that Ivan Ilyich won the heart of Praskovya Fyodorovna. They danced together at nighttime, and eventually he asked her to marry him, not because he had fallen madly in love with her but because she was a woman of good fortune and good looks therefore, both he and society proved it to be a worthy union. The narrator comments on Ivan’s reasons for marrying Praskovya. He says he “did what people of the highest standing considered correct (49)”. With these words, the narrator eludes to a very important aspect of Ivan’s character: he is strongly influenced by the judgments and thoughts of the people around him and high societies’ social standards. This makes Ivan a man of conformity rather than insubordination and noncompliance.

Ivan Ilyich’s marriage to Praskovya Fyodorvna was pleasant and seemed to be going very well until not long after Praskovya became pregnant with their first child. At this time, she began to want more from Ivan, but all he wanted was to go on living his simple, carefree life in accordance with societies’ standards. So Ivan did the only thing he could do, immerse himself in his work. The narrator explains, “. . . his need to fence off a world for himself outside the family became even more imperative (50)”. Ivan saw marriage as another job, one that he had to work at just as hard as he did at any other job. He, “realized that married life, though it offered certain conveniences, was in fact a very complex and difficult business, and that to do one’s duty to it—that is, to lead a proper, socially acceptable life—one had to develop a clearly defined attitude to it, just as one did with respect to work (50)”. Ivan does not care about whether his marriage will work out for his families’ sake but rather, he selfishly only cares about how a failed marriage will look and affect his social status in life. He longed for the respect and attention from society that society gives to those with lives worthy of being respected and praised. For this he held the display of a perfect family and a perfect marriage. Most importantly, Ivan cared about his work more than any other aspect of his life and it basically ran his life for the next seven years.

In 1880, Ivan Ilyich fell to his breaking point. Trying to keep up with the standards he had set for himself, he fell in to debt and was unable to get a higher paying job when he most needed it. He and his wife then moved in with his wife’s brother in the country in an effort to save money. Left with no work, Ivan found himself with nothing to do but think about his current situation. He realized he was in a bad place and so he decided the best thing to do was to go to Petersburg and look for a job. Ivan got extremely lucky, and with help from his friend, Zakhar Ivanovich, he was able to be placed back in his former ministry, but this time, ranked above his colleagues. He was ecstatic and sent letters back to his wife in the country informing her about his new position. He received money for relocating, which he quickly used to buy a new apartment and furnish it extravagantly. Everything was working out for Ivan and his marriage was even better than it had been since their first year together. Once he started work and he and his family had settled into their apartment, things began to fall in to place perfectly. It seems that Ivan did not learn anything from his past experience of almost losing everything he had worked for and instead, he has taken his new luck for granted. He still possesses the same selfish and unimportant goals of achieving attention for his successes in life and he still undermines the wishes of his wife. Although we learn that Ivan is a hard-working man, we discover that he is blind to what is really important in life.
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Antigone's Passion and Ismene's Rationality

What is the relationship between Antigone and Ismene like? In what ways do they their conversations expose their true characters?

Antigone and Ismene are very different characters. Although they are sisters, the way in which they think and react in various situations is much different. They are both strong and passionate women, but what they are vehement about is not the same, making their ability to agree upon things very limited and their relationship complicated and at times antagonistic. Antigone’s fervent desire to bring justice to her brother’s death is overwhelming to her sister, Ismene, who is insistent about staying in accordance with the rules of the city and the standards of women. Ismene, acting as the mother figure, tries to calm her sister’s impulsive behavior but is unsuccessful as Antigone is unrelenting and uncompromising about her plans to give her brother proper burial rites. During their intense conversations, Antigone’s persistency and stubbornness becomes apparent while Ismene’s submissiveness is undeniable. Antigone exclaims, “Die I must, I’ve known it all my life—how could I keep from knowing (511-12)? . . . If I had allowed my own mother’s son to rot, an unburied corpse—that would have been an agony (520-22)!” Ismene says to her sister, “we must be sensible. Remember we are women, we’re not born to contend with men . . . I must obey the ones who stand in power (74-80).” Antigone holds her ground even after her sister tries to talk some sense into her. “I will bury him myself,” she proclaims. “And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory (85-86)." Antigone displays her passion toward her beliefs. She feels that if she stands up for what she believes in, then dying for that cause will be good because in doing so, it brings her glory. According to her, to die for what one believes in is the ultimate means of glory. Antigone is carried away with this desire to have a glorious death and to uphold proper burial rites. It even interferes with how she treats her sister. In the mist of staying true to her beliefs, Antigone forgets about those who care about her and instead, focuses on her self without realizing how her actions may affect those around her. It is this lack of knowledge that makes Antigone a tragic character and her sister subject to the implications of her tragic flaws.

It is not until Antigone is caught and given her death sentence, that she starts to have compassion for the ones that care about her, in particular, her sister. Ismene comes forward to Creon saying how she should be punished with her sister because although she did not take part in the act, she feels responsible for her sister’s actions. Also, Ismene does not want to live without her sister because as she explained, “What do I care for life, cut off from you (618)?” Antigone refuses her sister’s desire to die with her. At first it seems that Antigone only wants her sister to live so she bask in all her glory alone but, later it seems more that she does not think her sister should die for something she didn’t do. Antigone shows some this compassion and remorse when she says, “Save yourself. I don’t grudge you your survival (624).” Although Antigone never really regretted her actions or was ashamed of them, in the end, she did realize that she might have gone about it in the wrong way—a way that deeply hurt her sister and her husband. Before her death she proudly says, “if this is the pleasure of the gods, once I suffer I will know that I was wrong. But if these men are wrong, let them suffer nothing worse than they mete out to me—these masters of injustice (1017-1020)!” In these words, Antigone exemplifies the tragic character in that in their tragic moment, when they have been brought down my some tremendous flaw, there is a deep realization or understanding of things. For Antigone, instead of blaming Creon until the end for her death, she accepts that it might just be the fate that the gods have given her.
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The Beginning of "Oedipus the King"

In pages 159 to 187 of “Oedipus the King” we get a clear idea of what this story is going to be about. We are not only reminded of the intelligent Oedipus’s previous uncovering of the riddle about the Sphinx, but we are also informed of a new fate that he will soon suffer from according to Tiresias, the blind prophet. Oedipus will learn what his fate is only after he has solved the riddle that Tiresias told him upon his visit to the royal house of Thebes. The riddle refers to Laius’s killer, whom Oedipus is looking for as the only way, according to Lord Apollo, for the citizens of Thebes to end the plague that has begun to corrupt and destroy their city. The riddle goes “A stranger, you may think, who lives among you, he soon will be revealed a native Theban but he will take no joy in the revelation. Blind who now has eyes, beggar who now is rich, he will grope his way toward a foreign soil, a stick tapping before him step by step. Revealed at last, brother and father both to the children he embraces, to his mother son and husband both—he sowed the loins his father sowed, he spilled his father’s blood (185)!” Oedipus must figure out who and what Tiresias is referring to before he can attempt to help the city relieve itself from the burdens of the plague. The readers know already that this riddle is of Oedipus’s own fate. We are aware that as king he has married his own mother, but he has yet to be informed about this unlawful and displeasing union. With this information, we are cognizant of the tragic moment that is about to occur with his discovery of this knowledge. This lack of knowledge or ignorance of family relationships makes Oedipus a tragic character that will at some point fall from his greatness because of the tragic flaws he possesses. It is this revelation or discovery of his position that will bring his demise in life.

In just these few first pages, there are many foreshadows of what the future holds for both the city of Thebes and for Oedipus. I like that in the brief introduction of “Oedipus the King”, I was able to learn more about Oedipus than what I knew from his old story. I was able to get a better understanding of how Oedipus played his role as king and how he reacted with the troubled Thebans. Serving as a perfect example of a tragic character, Oedipus is a highly renowned and prosperous king. He even refers to his own greatness when he first addresses the kneeling Thebes. He says, “ . . .you all know me, the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus.” With pride he exclaims to a priest kneeling before him with homage to his success and with hope that he might end the plague, “You can trust me. I am ready to help, I’ll do anything (159).” Right from this moment I felt that Oedipus genuinely wanted to do good for his fellow Thebans and that he sincerely wanted to help them because it hurt him more than the plague hurt them to see them with such pain and suffering.

In the next readings of “Oedipus the King” I want to look out for moments when the king’s tone toward the city of Thebes changes as well as for the climactic tragic moment when Oedipus discovers his true identity. I also am interested to see if the people continue to have hope and faith in their leader as they seem to have so much of in the beginning or if they start to question him and believe that it was he who killed Laius.
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