In the following excerpt, Pachmuss examines Ivan's transformation from his fear of death to his discovery of love.

Tolstoy described a most terrifying agony in "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" Ivan Ilyich also lived a false life, filled with lies and artificially multiplied needs. All his colleagues liked him, and yet, on receiving the news of his death, their first thoughts were of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances. They gave no thought to the deceased himself, who had but recently lived among them. Even in the beginning of the work we may conjecture from Ivan Ilyich's feeling of loneliness that the sense of isolation while dying horrified Tolstoy as much as the thought of death itself. This isolation, the novelist warns, influences man's relationship with nature, which includes not only his life but his death. Affected by "civilization," Ivan Ilyich...