SOURCE: Salys, Rima. “Signs on the Road of Life: ‘The Death of Ivan Il'ič.’” Slavic & East European Journal 30, no. 1 (spring 1986): 18-28.

In the following essay, Salys investigates the function of objects, imagery, and metaphorical language in The Death of Ivan Ilyich, contending that “although objects and language both point the way to Ivan's destination, the central metaphor for his physical decline and spiritual renewal is the road of life and related directional body movement.”

The narrator of The Death of Ivan Il'ič tells his hero's story with relentless and devastating assurance. He relates the steps leading to Ivan's death—his pleasant and decorous life, his illness, spiritual crisis, and conversion—with the absolute certainty of one who fully knows the nature and consequences of such a life: “most simple and ordinary and most dreadful.”¹ It is not immediately evident, however, that the imagery and metaphorical language of the...