The Riddle of Life and Death: Tell Me a Riddle and The Death of Ivan Ilych (Two By Two)

About this book

These two literary classics dare to pose difficult existential questions: What is the meaning of life? Was my life of value? Why am I dying? The narrative employed in Tolstoys novella is linear and realistically detailed. The style of Olsens story set in the United States about a century later is allusive moving in psychological time from the senses voices and scenes in the present to memories of the past. Other differences are sharper still: Tolstoys Ilych is a self-satisfied czarist official; Olsens protagonist Eva once a proletarian revolutionary is a sixty-nine year-old dissatisfied working-class housewife mother and grandmother. Tolstoy focuses entirely on the life of a "model" man of his generation who is successful professionally though less so in his private life. Ultimately though Olsen and Tolstoy demand that readers examine their lives and consider questions about pain suffering inequalities fate and ones life work.