To quote Norman Cousins, “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." Ivan Ilyich discovers at the end of his life that he is surrounded by many false friends and family who do not think about his health. The novella written by Leo Tolstoy presents us in a strong and strengthened way with the superficiality of bourgeois relationships by using the omniscient point of view to describe the respective characters. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay One of the main characters in the story is Peter. Peter is a bourgeois who studied with Ivan when they were younger, and for Ivan he has been his best friend and a person he trusts and respects a lot throughout his life, but as a famous phrase shows us, “False friends they are like shadows. They follow you in the sun but leave you in the dark." Peter was not what Ivan thought, Peter was a false friend only interested in his money and status and in Ivan's dark days he was not present. In the first chapter of our story, we can know how Peter behaves because he cares about Ivan's death and how if he was worried but he wasn't, he was thinking about the advantages he could get from the event, and this attitude is evident in the first paragraphs , when he tells his boss about Ivan's death. Looking at the previous example, we can see how Peter was false and not a friend that people want to have. Another example is how selfish he was with Ivan and this shows us more what a good friend is. They are not all good friends for you, you have to choose the real ones and Peter is the one we have to avoid, because he only thinks about his benefits, for example, when Ivan dies, his brother in law can take Ivan's job and then his wife will be happy with him . We can perceive this falsehood in many fragments. An example to finish showing a bit of what Peter did concerns the ''sacrifice'' he had to make when Ivan died and he doesn't want to attend the funeral because for him it was a waste of time as he didn't really feel bad about the death of Ivan. We can see this attitude in the following passage: "After telling his wife during lunch about Ivan Ilyich's death and his hypothesis that it was possible to have his brother transferred to their constituency, Pyotr Ivanovich sacrificed his usual nap, put on his evening clothes and went to Ivan Ilyich's house.'' Looking at all the above examples, we can deduce that Ivan's life is not really good, because the person he considers his best friend was false and selfish. We all know that Ivan was not the perfect person and makes many mistakes with his family but we only deserve one person to trust and the person he likes a lot only thinks about himself and with that we can sense that Ivan suffers for everything he has done. Another important character in the story is Praskovya Fedorovna, Ivan's wife Praskovya is a really essential character to the text, being another example of how unfortunate Ivan's life was because his wife didn't like him and only cared about his own. money and the fortune he will obtain after his death, like Peter. Other people we will see are his children. His son was a really kind person who cared for his father and stayed with him until his death, but his daughter wasn't like that, he was ready to get married and because her father got sick she had to put the wedding on hold. Ivan was not a current father and husband, he only cared about his work and his own life and because of this selfishness his wife began to hate him more and more and thought that everything bad that happened in his life was his fault, even the simpler things and that's why Praskovya notshe was sad about Ivan's death, it was the opposite and for her, when he dies, she will be free and will have all the money she worked for. One example that clearly explains how much Praskovya hates Ivan when she was about to die she tried to prove to the doctor that she was really kind and that she was a good wife, she kisses him, but she never did it before so we can see that she is like that just to show other people another reality. The other two characters who help us see the reality of Ivan's life are his son and daughter. His son, Vladmir, is Ivan's younger brother and we can show that he is really kind to his father who is very ill and suffering from a very difficult disease, so the son is very worried and worried about his father's future. This may happen because he is too young to understand things but he was not like other bourgeois and at the end of Ivan's life, Ivan felt sorry for Vladimir and saw how much his son meant to him and felt sorry because of what he did everything bad. Looking at the last paragraph, we can see hope in many falsehoods of the bourgeoisie, we can see that Vasya, Ivan's son, is not like others and cares about his father's feelings and expresses his feelings in the text, the feelings of a person who is not like everything around him. To show another reality, without falsehood and selfishness and to see that it was not Ivan's whole life that was like this, Gerasim, his servant was not like the other and was not part of the bourgeoisie, representing a different person in between to others, salvation. Gerasim, he is a good boy compared to the others and we see this from the beginning of the story that he is different from the other because he is not bourgeois, he is proletarian (the middle class) and those people work for the bourgeois and were better than the others because he was one of the few people who actually cared about Ivan's health and how Ivan felt. At the beginning of the text, when Ivan was still a bad person who doesn't care about others and only cares about himself and his work, Gerasim did everything to him and Ivan felt better, but when Ivan feels that he will make him die , he started to be a better person and be kind to Gerasim, and then he understands how important he and other people are in his life, as in the continuation of the last paragraph, he told Gerasim that Gerasim no longer has to do everything to him and then Ivan will show Gerasim that he has changed a lot. Gerasim, after all, what Ivan did to him was still kind and he was the one who confirmed to Ivan that he was dying. Everyone tried to hide it from Ivan, but Gerasim thinks about Ivan and how this will change him and that was a bad idea to do so, so while he was taking care of Ivan he said to him: he saw that no one felt compassion for him, why not yes he even wanted to understand his position. Only Gerasim recognized him and took pity on him. And so Ivan Ilyich felt comfortable only with him. He felt comforted when Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all night) and refused to go to bed, so he mostly told Ivan, being really authentic and honest. To draw the conclusion about how different and important Gerasim was in Ivan's life, we have to consider everything that Gerasim did to him and that Gerasim helps Ivan to change his life regarding everything that was going on, and then Ivan starts to be selfish and superficial who simply took care of himself. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom article from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay To conclude about everything that happens in the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", it is clear to understand that Leo Tolstoy, in the text, wants to show us what a miserable life is and an example to show us what Ivan's life is Il'ic. Looking at the.