🔖 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list

🔅Read this as part of a humanities course with the takeaway message being the dignity (or lack thereof) during illness and death. This is a slow-paced novel but Tolstoy really portrays the main characters feelings of being a burden to his family, how worthless and useless he feels when illness takes over. It really is heartbreaking because ageism, elderly abuse/neglect is a common issue now that life expectancy keeps increasing and younger populations are faced with caring for parents who’re slowly reverting to being totally dependent. Although Ivan Illych is not elderly he still constantly reflects how his family seems to be waiting for him to get it over with and die already. 

🔅It is similar to Kafka’s The Metamorphosis in the sense of feeling unwelcome in one’s own family.