Ivan Faces Death
...pushed to the bottom. And this, terrible enough in itself, was accompanied by suffering (1531).” This passage indicates that Ivan’s pain is not just coming from physical suffering; it’s more of mental anguish. The physical pain may be there, but mentally he is spinning out of control because death is calling him to repent but he can’t see the light because he is resisting reconciliation. In his last three agonizing days, the black sack reappears and he struggles mightily to resist it. “For three whole days, during which time did not exist for him, he struggled in that black sack into which he was being thrust by an invisible, resistless force.” He is struggling to fight off his inevitable death and does not realize that for the internal peace that he is seeking, he will need to see the errors in his ways. It takes awhile for Ivan to grasp this but begins to when the narrator says, “he felt that his agony was due to his being thrust into that black hole and still more to his not being able to get right into it.” The reason he can’t fall through the hole in the sack is because he is still “hindered from getting into it by his conviction that his life had been a good one.” This is what keeps Ivan from moving forward and seeing the light; “that very justification of his life held him fast and prevented his moving forward, and it caused him most torment of all.” Ivan wants to fall through this sack for relief of his anxiety, but fears it at the same time. It is an unknown entity to Ivan, and does not understand that although the sack represents an end to his life on earth, it is actually a spiritual rebirth. Finally he plunges through this hole that has so deeply terrified him and there is a light at the end. His revelation is described in another metaphor by Tolstoy; “what had happened to him was like the sensation one sometimes experiences in a railway carriage when one thinks one is going backwards while on is really going forwards and suddenly becomes aware of the real direction.” Ivan sudden...