"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" as seen through the eyes of Freud, Sartre, and Camus
The second chapter of Leo Tolstoy's extended short story entitled "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" begins with this memorable phrase: "Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." The psychoanalytic theorist Sigmund Freud as well as the existential theorists Jean-Paul Sartre and Camus would all agree with Tolstoy's assessment that most ordinary human existences are both terrible and simple. Freud reduced most of humanity's apparently complex drives to a very basic, animal instinct, that of the sex drive. All boys wished to assume the role of their father and marry their mother, but upon repressing and sublimating that drive they sought to please their father. This explains Ivan Ilyich's toady-like behavior towards men of high position, as he seeks to advance in society and simultaneously please these father figures but ultimately usurp them. Significantly, regarding Ilyich's early friendship with a governor and his wife, Ilyich is said to be "like o
ne of the family," as he replicates his early childhood desires to become like an authority figure and replicate that authority figure's life and home environment. In the tale of Ivan Ilyich, Sartre would see a man who has lived his entire life in subservience to politically and socially repressive institutions, a man who has lived as he feels he should live, not as if he were free. Depression comes when he cannot earn the salary he 'has' to have to live, 'having to' meaning by obeying societal dictates as to what constitutes a good life. He even takes a position as a lawyer, enforcing societal rules. As a young man, for example, Ilyich acts seriously when engaged in official matters and indulges in his personal life. " Although Ilyich associates depression with a lack of material wants and social esteem, Sartre sees ennui and alienation from an individual's true sense of freedom. In contrast to his associate Camus, Sartre stressed the need for societal rebellion from oppressive institutions, thus he would advice Ilyich, before his death, to rebel and reject such middle class values. Sartre said that all people are free, and misery is not necessarily innate to the human condition, but arises from the idea that all people must obey such conventions. In their views as to their acquaintances, husband, wife and daughter were entirely agreed and tacitly and unanimously kept at arm's length and shook off the various shabby friends and relations who, with much show of affection, gushed into the drawing-room with its Japanese plates on the walls. This is approved of for young men, and Ilyich always models his behavior on what others are doing. Although in sympathy with a great deal of Sartre's philosophy, Camus tended to emphasize individual freedom. " His pleasure-seeking drive then takes the form of constructing a tacky, middle-class home for his wife and daughter and playing bridge. His sensuality is a source of guilt in early life, but because he sees other men behaving in such a way, he allows himself some liberty until eventually, he sublimates his sexual drive into work, when: "His aim was to free himself more and more from those unpleasantness and to give them [his family] a semblance of harmlessness and propriety.
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Acceptance Essays
