The Big Read: Essay Contest
As part of our Big Read celebration, the Library sponsored an essay contest based on the following suggested topic from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Teacher’s Guide to The Death of Ivan Ilyich:
Several times over the course of the novella, we find statements very much like this one: "So that on the whole Ivan Ilyich’s life proceeded as he felt it should—pleasantly and properly." One’s first, instinctive reaction to such comments might be, "Well, what’s wrong with that?" What, according to Tolstoy, is wrong with that?
There were two divisions in the contest: one for writers under age 19, and one for over age 18. Essays were restricted to no more than 500 words and were judged on adherence to the topic, creativity, and quality of writing. We received twelve entries in the Under 19 division and nine entries in the Over 18 division. All essays were judged blind by a panel of university and high school faculty:
- Georgianne Bordner, Regent University Library
- Dr. Carrie White, Department English, Regent School of Undergraduate Studies
- Billy Newman, English department, Norview High School
Under 19 Winners:
- First Prize ($150): Alex Gladu, 10th grader at Tallwood High School
- Second Prize ($50): Andrew Core, 11th grader at Oscar Smith High School
- Third Prize ($25): Alex Anduze, 10th grader at Tallwood High School
Over 18 Winners:
- First Place ($150): Sarah Dolan, public relations coordinator, Regent journalism alumna (2008)
- Second Place ($50): Deborah Mangum, M.A. Community Counseling student, School of Psychology and Counseling
- Third Place ($25): Johnny Weixler, Psychology & Organizational Leadership, School of Undergraduate Studies
The Library thanks all participants and the judging panelists for making the essay contest a success.
First Prize-Winning Essays
Under 19
What is Wrong with Ivan Ilyich’s Life, by Alex Gladu
“Ivan Ilyich’s life had been most simple and most commonplace- and most horrifying.” (Chapter 2) This quote directly informs the reader that something was wrong in Ivan Ilyich’s life, but that maybe that error was not visible to the naked eye. On the outside Ivan Ilyich’s life seemed just as it should- he was married, he had two children, he had a good job, and his family had some money. Even Ivan Ilyich himself seemed nothing but content with his lifestyle. Nevertheless, there was undoubtedly something missing from his “honorable” life.
Ivan Ilyich always needed people to approve of him. He did whatever he felt was “appropriate” for a man of his social standing. The main mistake he made because of this mindset was getting married even though he had previously had no intention of doing so. He liked Praskovya Fyodorovna, but he certainly didn’t love her. She fell in love with him and since his acquaintances saw marriage as the appropriate thing to do he thought, “Really, why shouldn’t I get married?” (Chapter 2). This arrangement seemed fine to Ivan Ilyich at first, but he soon changed his mind. He found himself searching desperately for ways to get out of spending time at home with his family. When he was forced to be at home, he often brought friends with him and played cards or stayed in his study. Ivan Ilyich’s life was missing true love.
Ivan Ilyich’s life also lacks true meaning. While his job is a very important one, he does not do anything else worthwhile. He devotes himself to card games and gambles with his friends, but other than that, Ivan Ilyich does not do anything meaningful with his life. In a way, Ivan Ilyich’s life is just like a game of whist. It is simply social gathering after social gathering with appropriate moves to make and ruled to be followed. Life, for Ivan Ilyich, is simply an opportunity to climb the social ladder. He has spent his entire life worrying about things that are frivolous and unnecessary.
Ivan Ilyich’s life has a moral to it for the novella’s audience. When readers reexamine his life, they begin to find what Ivan Ilyich finally realized: Life is too short to be lived without meaning. He asks himself, “What if my entire life, my entire conscious life, simply was not the real thing?” (Chapter 11). By this point, Ivan Ilyich has realized that he has wasted his life on things that have no lasting meaning and value, but he cannot do anything about it now because he is terminally ill and dying. His last effort to change devastatingly fails as he attempts to mutter the word “forgive.” Does he wish to say, “forgive me,” because he knows that this entire tragedy is his fault? Sadly, there is nothing else Ivan Ilyich can do. Tolstoy reminds readers, however, that it is not too late to make their lives meaningful.
Over 18
A Second Glance, by Sarah Dolan
“…he is like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.”
-James 1: 23, 24 (NASB)
In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy creates an image-bound society—a people who determine the pleasant and proper as reflected in the appearance of life, which Tolstoy saw as not having any meaning at all. Ivan is a product of such a society. He is a worldly careerist whose valued proprieties mark the antithesis of the spiritual life that Tolstoy solely deemed worthwhile.
Ivan catches a glimpse of Tolstoy’s contempt for the pleasant and proper surface-lived life in one climatic episode. Ivan’s brother-in-law, a robust fellow, is visiting the Ilyich’s before the New Year. His reaction to Ivan’s gaunt, sickly appearance is horror and gaping disbelief. This sends Ivan straight to the mirror to confirm his grossly changed appearance. While Tolstoy reportedly could not resist looking at death, Ivan, up to this point, never bothered to even think about it. But seeing death for the first time, Ivan realized that he was a product of a society bound to the reflection. No longer did the motions of life—the appearance of pity for another, popularity through card games, importance through job status, or wealth seen through strategically placed garden plants—matter. “And so Tolstoy stares remorselessly through the orifices of the death mask of a man whose social and moral features have nothing whatsoever in common with his own,” (p. 1) Ronald Blythe writes.
Ivan is part of a society that is said to live in the un-reflected perpetual present, where conversation and thought are un-related. Spoken words are pleasant and proper because they are external in a world where the internal does not have a place. In the courtroom of such a society, conversation is one of the many motions of life, and geared to please the jury of one’s peers. The shallowness Tolstoy saw in this became evident to Ivan at the moment he looked at death in the mirror, the same moment he loathed and rebelled against the society that he embraced for so long. Ivan learns that death is an uncomfortable reminder to the living that there is more to life than what can be seen, and ironically, the people he left behind are also dead—nothing more than empty shells that abandoned the soul for something that looked better.
The one thing necessary in life
as in art is to tell the truth.
Leo Tolstoy
