Extra Credit Assignment

The character Ivan Ilych from Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and the character Ebenezer from Chales Dicken's A Cristmas Carol both suffer from an extreme fear of death which leads them to be critical of the way they have lived their lives. Both characters look back at an earlier, happier time in their lives before coming to the realization that they have cared too much about money in the case of Scrooge and money and social status in the case of Ivan. Another way in which these characters are similar is the contrast they come to notice between themselves and characters who are more open and honest about the way they live their lives, the peasant Gerasim who truly cares for Ivan and Bob Crachit, who is treated so badly by Scrooge and yet never criticizes him.

Ivan, a judge who does not live for himself but for the purpose of social climbing blindly adopts values of an aristocratic society. He believes that if he emulates the materialistic life of high society he will find meaning in his own life. He marries not because of love but because he has found a woman who socially acceptable and decorates his house with fancy material objects to try to cement his upper class status. Ebenezer Scrooge is a very rich and miserly old man. The two characters are different because Scrooge, unlike Ivan, does not care what society thinks about him. Also, Scrooge starts to reflect on a life he has not lived well because of a supernatural experience when the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows him his own grave thanks to a visit from his dead partner Jacob Marley, who does not want Scrooge to suffer his fate of spending eternity in chains because of the greedy life he led. He has been shown by the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Christmas Present and of Christmas Yet to Come what a selfish miserable life he has had. Ivan has to reflects on his selfish life all on his own after an accident begins to cause him great pain and slowly kills him. He is searching for meaning in his life because he knows it is going to end and, as he says "... I did everything properly." He means thatb he did everything he thought the society he wanted to be in expected him to do.

Even though A Christmas Carol is almost like a children's story because the symbolism of the ghosts is very obvious and in contrast The Death of Ivan Ilych is a more sophisticated psychological story about a man who is having what seems to me like an existential experience trying to figure out his own nature, both Scrooge and Ivan Ilych are used to illustrate the same moral. That moral is that to have a good life people have to care about their fellow human beings and not be focused on trying to be "cool" in other people's eyes in a way that makes their world revolve only around them.