EC #1 History

f. Please discuss and analyze any other aspects of the book, of your choice, that relates to our sense of lostness, the source of our lostness, and our attempts to either cover up or fill that emptiness through heroic life and/or the approval of others.

Ivan throughout his life is masked by this artificiality. He gets brainwashed from the time where he attends the school of law. He puts into his head that he wants to be successful and approved by society. Similar to the book Tuesdays with Morrie, the thought of facing death makes Ivan realize his true values. He looks back on his life and feels the emptiness that we often feel today. Although there were points in his life where he was in fact quite successful, he realizes he was constantly masked by the artificiality of the people around him.
At the beginning of the book Ivan seems to be growing up in an average childhood. He seems quite happy and becomes more ambitious as he grows older. Once he is faced with this illness he discovers while furnishing his new house he does not immediately realize what he values in his life and that the only real joy he felt within his life was way at the beginning in his childhood. His ambition, although very important and vital to some people, ruins the joy he could have had in his life. Even during the beginning middle of the book where he is successful and has more or less what he wanted and aimed for, he does not seem satisfied as ambition constantly wants you to get more of what you already have never leaving you happy with what you currently posses.

In the book two completely different types of lives are represented. There is the lifestyle Ivan is living and the lifestyle that he wished he had been been living near his death. His way of life is represented by fake relationships with friends and materialistic surroundings. The way of life that he wished he had lived only becomes clear to him when he is nearing his death. He realizes that a large portion of the path or journey he went in his life with was done in a way that was not quite as authentic as he planned. The irony though, is that the life he did want to pursue and live was very similar to that of Gerasim. Gerasim fills the role of living the more authentic which in end is viewed as the more fullfilling lifestyle. Similiar again to Tuesdays with Morrie, Ivan learns that to start living life, one must learn to overcome the fear of death that we are all in such denial about.