Trial by death is one of the favorite themes in Tolstoy's works. This theme is most prominent in the "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", where the whole novel is about the painful dying of Ivan Ilyich Golovin.

... Trial by death is one of the favorite themes in Tolstoy's works. This theme is most prominent in the "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", where the whole novel is about the painful dying of Ivan Ilyich Golovin. The horror of life wrongly lived, and subsequent judgment constitute the Tolstoy's message in this book. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" preserves the Tolstoy's favorite literary tool for coming to terms with the world - psychological analysis. Tolstoy was always dedicated to exploring the conflict between individual and his or her environment. His best-known characters usually are against the surroundings to which they were born and conditioned. The latter Tolstoy, as in the case with "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", is mainly interested in rebirth of the person from the privileged social class, who has felt the social inequality, moral shallowness and hypocrisy of the life around. Tolstoy was convinced, that a

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