SOURCE: "Tolstoy and Hemingway: The Death of Ivan Ilych' and 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro'," in Disease and the Novel, 1880-1960, Macmillan, 1985, pp. 19-29.

In the following essay, Meyers compares "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" to Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," maintaining that it is a modern, non-religious version of Tolstoy's tale.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Plato, Apology

I

Tolstoy was Hemingway's literary hero, for both men had fought in battles and written a great novel about war and love. Despite his apparent deference, Hemingway matched his own short story masterpiece against Tolstoy's finest work in that genre when he consciously imitated and transformed "The Death of Ivan Ilych" (1886) in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936). In both stories the heroes are dying in early middle age of a smelly disease, which has trivial origins (a knock on the side, a scratch from a thorn) and symbolizes the...