Leo Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich at the same time when many aspects of Russian society included inequality, moral decay, and censorship. At the end of his life, Ivan Ilyich discovers he has never really lived. Ivan Ilyich follows the rules of society. He earns respect, receives promotion after promotion, yet never stops to question if the things he has accomplished are what he wants for himself. In addition to being a physical accident, Tolstoy portrays Ivan’s fall from a ladder as the