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What Leo Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich Teaches Us About Faith Friends and Family | Ladder to Nowhere

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A man on a shaky ladder, a fall that leaves a bruise, and a life that suddenly tastes bitter—Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich gives us one of literature’s clearest X-rays of modern emptiness. We gather with friends to unpack why a story written in 1886 speaks uncomfortably well to status-chasing, curated lives, and the quiet neglect of the people closest to us. Along the way, we ask hard questions about sacrifice, spiritual participation, and what it really takes to make a home feel like a living, breathing church.

We start with the image of the bruise—how a small accident blooms into moral clarity—and follow it into marriage. Through Ivan’s unreliable eyes, his wife seems petty and cold; with a wider lens, she appears faithful, present, even courageous as she brings a priest and urges communion. That tension opens a deeper conversation: family as a school of self-giving; the cost of motherhood and the subtler demands on fathers; and why tender, Christlike leadership from husbands often unlocks a responsive, resilient love. A simple parenting moment—a father shifting from command to kindness—becomes a model for authority as stewardship rather than control.

From there, we hold Tolstoy’s quiet hint of redemption alongside the need to act before the end. Participation matters: in sacraments, community, honest conversation, and art that reads us back. We contrast vanity’s ladder with the ladder of ascent, examine main-character syndrome, and challenge the habits that keep us numb to the good right in front of us. The practical takeaways are simple and demanding: move your ladder, choose the table over the timeline, and practice seeing what is lovely in others so cynicism doesn’t win.

If this conversation stirred something in you, subscribe for more thoughtful, faith-filled literary dives, share with a friend who loves classics, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway or pushback—we’d love to hear where you agree, disagree, or want to go deeper next.


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SPEAKER_00:

I called you Alfonso. Sorry, Jane.

SPEAKER_02:

You did the whole thing. Oh, you did?

SPEAKER_03:

I didn't even notice.

SPEAKER_00:

You didn't like you blinked it, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I was like, changed your changer, but now just you called me Alfonso every time. It's fine. The death of Ivan Ilich shows that emptiness in that he damages his side, hanging some drapes. Drapes that you know no one's gonna care about when he's dead. Meaningless. Right? Yep. But he's climbing this ladder leading to nowhere. It's unstable. He falls, he bruises his side. That bruise, as an illustration for sin, spreads throughout his body.

SPEAKER_00:

But then we also see that this shift in their marriage happened once she had a baby, right? And I think she began to grow because women can't escape giving our lives for our children. It happens in pregnancy, it happens when they're newborns. We give up our sleep, we give up of our own body to feed this baby.

SPEAKER_01:

Definitely in the military, I feel like like this is the big thing of why people get out of the military is like everyone just always says, You're just a number. Because if you do die in a position, right, or you are in some, you know, you you get out, they're just gonna fill your spot.

SPEAKER_03:

Tying this to Ivan Illock, I'm thinking, here's this guy who I I had the sense while reading it. He was like an afterthought. Hi, Jeremy Jeremiah here, Cloud of Witnesses. We are discussing the death of Ivan Illock, Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece. This is quite a story. We have an amazing discussion with some friends here. We are hoping that you stick around to the end. Leave us some comments down below. Let us know what you think. Have you read this? Are you interested in reading it now? What do you think about our interpretations and some of the applications to the modern world, which is shocking to think about since this book was written, I think, in 1886, and yet it still hits as hard as it did back then. There's a reason why we still read classic novels and novellas like The Death of Ivan Illick. So please enjoy the uncut, full, unedited video is over right now, available on our Patreon, and that's available for all of our Patreons. We're hoping that you go check that out. But for now, enjoy this episode and we'll see you at the end. Bye-bye. Pick up our cross every day, right? We have to participate in the things of the church, the sacraments of the church. Why? Because if we don't, then we're really living like Ivan Illett. Even if we call ourselves an Orthodox Christian, even if we say, Oh, I believe in Christ, you know, Christ is my savior, if you're not participating, what are you doing? You're like one of his coworkers who awkwardly does the sign of the cross because he doesn't know what else to do when he walks into the funeral. Right. And so I I want to stress, which Alex made such a great point, is that there is something lacking in this story. As beautiful as a story as it is, as powerful as a story as it is, it doesn't have that richer kernel that you might find in Dostoevsky, where you do find real redemption, perhaps. Now I think Ivan Illico, I think we uh agreed that there's a certainly a hint that he found redemption, right? It's not overt, it's not explicit. But if he did, it's like thief on the cross, in a sense. And what a shame that is. You know, now obviously that's an a beautiful presentation of the grace of God, you know, and and we all pray that we would have that opportunity on our deathbed as well. But we don't know, right? What do we know? We know we have today, and so I guess what I'm trying to say is participate, even in things like what we're doing right now, examine your life, read good literature, and don't just read it. Challenge yourself, talk to your friends about it, join a book club. Are you engaged with your church community? Right? These are the types of things that ultimately bring transformation. So I to me that was something that was coming out of what you were saying, James. I was just kind of want to share that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and the the fact that this story comes at I it focuses on an aspect of life that puts um puts that really in the front and center of the whether or not I mean, because anybody, you don't necessarily have to do anything, right? Uh I I love what um my father-in-law always says. I don't have to do anything but be Mexican and die, right? And um, and you're right.

SPEAKER_01:

Not even pay taxes, huh?

SPEAKER_02:

You don't have to do it technically, you don't have to do anything that you don't want to do. But what gives your life value, what gives your life meaning, where is virtue found? Those those things have stipulations on there's haves and haves not, right? You have to do this, you must not do that, right? And that's where virtue is found. That's where meaning is. So the rules are already there. You don't get to decide the rules. The rules are there for virtuous life or meaningless life, right? But what's at the center of this story that shows us that lack of virtue, that lack of meaning, the the spiritual barrenness comes in an institution that requires sacrifice. And I think my wife can speak to this more than anything that that's the family. God has instituted something that requires a person to be absolutely selfless, and you sacrifice so much of yourself, especially as a wife and mother, and maybe you can kind of speak to how that leads us into union with Christ.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh man. Yeah, I think so. Well that going back to um Ivan's marriage is like he was unwilling to sacrifice his own happiness, and I think it was Alex who said he's an unreliable narrator, and I'm like, that is so true, because like you said, the wife was so unlikable, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it seemed like it.

SPEAKER_00:

Seemed like it. But I think we were seeing her through Ivan's eyes, which she was the cause for his unhappiness. So of course she would seem as if she were just unpleasant to be around. But then we also see that this shift in their marriage happened once she had a baby, right? And I think she began to grow because women can't escape giving our lives for our children. It happens in pregnancy, it happens when they're newborns, we give up our sleep, we give up of our own body to feed this baby. And I think it's a little bit easier for men to kind of run from that. I mean, while men still do sacrifice for their family with work and um protecting their family, but I think for women we're kind of confronted with that in a way that we can't run from it.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I think for Ivan, he did run from it. And I feel like maybe, and we don't know because again, it's unreliable, but I feel like maybe his wife pressed into that and maybe grew into that, giving of herself or her family because she was in charge of caring for the children. She would really give Ivan good advice that he did not take, and he would just do his own thing. Um I think maybe she did grow and he just didn't grow with her. So of course their marriage began to fracture.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. We saw some hints that she did grow indeed, right? What happens at the end or towards the end from what does she do? Yeah. That kind of gives us that sense of hope that maybe, as I loved how Alex put that, that maybe Ivan is not being totally honest, or whether he's honest, or but or his perception was so warped by his own self-interest and his own pity delusion and self-pity that he didn't see maybe this wife who was maybe there for him all along. Um, what did we see?

SPEAKER_00:

We saw that at the end when he was really close to death, she brought the priest and she really encouraged him to take communion. Um, and maybe she didn't have a full understanding of what it was, but I love that she put that effort to like she saw that her husband was dying, she understood what communion meant, right, at the end of his life, and she begged him, right, with sweet terms of endearment.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's when I we I think we began to see, like, okay, maybe she's not that bad.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So she brought the priest in, she begged him to take communion, and he was really refusing at first. And then once he did, I feel like Ivan got that little glimmer of hope and a little bit of healing, maybe not physically, but spiritually. Um, and I think as a loving wife, we push our husbands towards sanctification, towards theosis. Um and I thought that was beautiful that she was like, that maybe there's nothing I can do for him, but I I know someone who might be able to, a priest, bring the priest in.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. What what I hear there, Bray, but at least part of that, which I think is so beautiful, and maybe also hints at the fact that she wasn't as bad as we first thought, based on the narration, is that she was faithful to him. Right. In today's world, especially. A wife of Ivan Illich, she's she's met somebody else, right? Or she's spending time with somebody else, or she's, you know what I mean? She's in some way emotionally getting that attention that Ivan's not giving her somewhere else, right? We don't see any hint of that. She raises the kids, like you said, almost like with an absentee, you know, husband, right?

SPEAKER_02:

And goes to the movie with the kids. She's still very much involved in their life as they continue to grow, right? As Ivan is increasingly more absent.

SPEAKER_03:

Amen. Can I say this? And I would love to hear you guys' thoughts on this. I've often said, or heard it said, that marriages are 50-50. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. How about now?

SPEAKER_01:

No. How about now? Yeah, a little bit. Okay. Perfect. Right there. That should help, hopefully.

SPEAKER_03:

I think that's gonna help a lot more. Okay.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Can you hear me? Testing, testing.

SPEAKER_00:

Test, test, test.

SPEAKER_01:

Say uh one, two, three.

SPEAKER_00:

One, two, three.

SPEAKER_01:

All eyes on me.

SPEAKER_00:

All eyes on me.

SPEAKER_01:

Perfect, perfect. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, just before you were gonna ask both of them another question, I was like, okay, I want to change the mic to Mari.

SPEAKER_03:

Would you mark just time around 47? Maybe we're gonna need to cut it. Um that's alright. Give your phone, text it to me, just text it to me real quick. Appreciate that. Are we still rolling? We're still rolling. Okay. Um people often talk about marriage as being 50-50. As a Christian, I've come to be convinced that it's not 50-50. But that and I I'm not trying to take credit for any of this, but this is talked about by white, much wiser men than me and people. What a man gives, a woman's gonna respond. If a man is loving and devoted and invested in his wife, his wife is going to respond to that. And she's gonna be even more devoted, even more invested. And what I'm trying to say is I feel like more responsibility falls on the man to be a good husband, to be loving, to be kind, to be all these things. And I truly believe that when a man is those things, when a man has Christ as his head and he's genuinely loving his wife as Christ loved the church, she's gonna be most the most amazing wife ever. Because she's responding to his that's that feminine energy, right? It's the responsive energy. So tying this to Ivan Hillick, I'm thinking, here's this guy who I I had the sense while reading it. She was like an afterthought. She was just there. I use the word too often. She was like furniture, right? Just there. And yet she still was there with the kids. She still think about how sad and hurtful that must have been for her for years to not have that loving husband. What do you guys think about that?

SPEAKER_00:

We well, we even see it when Ivan gets a promotion, right, and moves the whole family to a new city. Right. And he had discussed it with her, and she said, No, I don't want to move. And he's like, Well, we're moving. And they moved everyone, and that was the beginning of the end for Ivan, right? In in moving and redecorating the house. But I was smiling while you were saying that because we had an interaction with our daughter, who's four, and Alfonso is trying to get her to come to the dinner table.

SPEAKER_02:

I do, I do.

SPEAKER_00:

And Alfonso's like, you're gonna come sit down. Well, we have three boys and a baby girl. So with the boys, we can be very militant and they will listen. And with her, the more Alfonso pressed her, come sit down, wash your hands. She just dug in her little heels. And she actually went up. Upstairs.

SPEAKER_02:

Not only did she not wash her hands, and not only did she not get any closer to the table, as her body moved further and further from the table. And I was like, You're gonna come and you're gonna sit down. I will never sit down. She marched upstairs and just put on her meet her girl pop through the Alexa and just tuned us out.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep.

SPEAKER_00:

So we're sitting there, and the boys are like shocked. Because when dad says something, they listen. And she was like, Nope, I'm not gonna do it. So I kind of counseled my husband and I was like, You know how you're gonna get her to come? I said, You're gonna be sweet with her, and you're gonna tell her, I would just love for you to sit at my table. You'd be so beautiful. And he challenged me. He's like, I don't think that's gonna work. So he did, and then what I took that bet and I lost.

SPEAKER_02:

Um I I changed my tone. I I put my voice in the most gentle voice where I was like, baby girl, and she's like, Yes, dad. I'm like, can you come downstairs for me? I want to give you a big hug, right? She comes downstairs, she kind of waits for me at the top of the stairs and gives me a look like, what is this? I'm like, can you cut just snuggle with me for a minute? She goes, sure. So she comes downstairs, she gets into my arms, and I'm like, it would make me so happy if you came and sat at the table with us. I'd love to be able to eat and look at your beautiful face. And she goes, Okay. I'm like, Can you go wash your hands, please? And then sure enough, yeah, I'll go wash my hands. She goes washes their hands, and my wife is just looking at me.

SPEAKER_03:

What a story. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02:

And it totally different. And the boys, their jaws were on the table as well. Like, wow, that works. And um, and I told him, Well, kiddos, you just learn how to win yourself a woman.

SPEAKER_00:

And she happily sat and ate. But I was, it's exactly what you said, right? The responsibility is on the man to be soft, to be considerate of his wife, just the way that Christ is with us, right? Um, what is it? It's the goodness of the Lord, the kindness of the Lord. The kindness of the Lord that brings us to repentance. And you know, he compares the husband to being Christ to the church, which is his bride.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, and I think that oftentimes men are a little bit confused by that. And the the story of Beauty and the Beast is like a perfect example, right? When he was like, Come to dinner, and she's like, I will not come. He's like, then go ahead and start. That did not help the situation. But once she saw his kindness, his sweetness, feeding the birds with his hands.

SPEAKER_02:

You mean once she saw his library, and the library, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

That was a big step.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm not too sure Melan was that that impressed with the library.

SPEAKER_02:

My daughter's a bookworm. She would be very impressed with the library.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. But I think it it's the challenge of men to be soft and to be kind. Yeah. And to win their wives over that way.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's not to say that there aren't women out there who are also difficult in their own way as we can be. But I do feel, and I I feel bad for you men, because you guys do have the bigger responsibility in that sense.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and kind of to to not challenge what you said, but to it really takes a hundred a hundred, you know? Um, because if if you're in if you're both not fully invested, there's no chance. There's a hundred percent chance of failure of the marriage. Because what we see in the death of Ivan Ilyich is uh two ladders, right? And one's in in contrast, um the the ladder of divine ascent, which is not a part of the story, but we get to see the opposite ladder, which is a ladder leading to destruction, a ladder of emptiness, a ladder pursuing success and vanity. And when you pursue marriage as part of vanity, as part of um maintaining appearances, I got married because that's the thing that people do when they're trying to be successful. They have a family. But you're not willing to now do what is necessary to maintain a family, it's it's going to fall apart. It's going to lead to destruction. And it'll be either destroy you or it'll destroy your family. And the same thing with a wife, right? If she's going to be a part of a family in order to love a husband and to love your children, it takes a lot of sacrifice. You have to sacrifice your body first and foremost to have a child, right? Which is incredibly dangerous. And then when you have the child, now you need to sacrifice your body again to feed the child. Meanwhile, the dad has to go and sacrifice his body out in the field, on the plow, to collect, to hunt, to gather. And everyone is sacrificing, even the child who's sacrificing. Um, they didn't really choose to live this life, and they have to live with these parents that are, you know, putting demands on their life and making their life either difficult or however it may be. Sacrificing independence. Sacrificing independence. Because now none of them are living for themselves. They're all living for each other, kind of reinforcing what I'm saying about communal living. It's embedded into us, it's embedded into most of the animal kingdom. If you just only need to look at monkeys and elephants and and wolves and many others, that they all form, they all for the most part um kind of serve a community, if not an ecosystem that depends on everyone doing their part. And if somebody doesn't do their part, they usually get eaten, right? Um, and that's how it is in today's world. The reason why the family is so unsuccessful, divorce rates have skyrocketed, the birth rate has gone down, is because of the main main character syndrome story arc. Yeah, right. Yep. I'm not gonna have a family. Why? Because this is my story, this is my life. I'm not gonna sacrifice my life for no man, for no woman, for no kids, right? I'm gonna have, I'm gonna get mine. I'm gonna look out for myself and I'm gonna get mine, right? Right. Um, and that's that's an anti-hero, right? It's a villain, that's a villain, right? Exactly. That's Lex Luthor, right? He doesn't have a wife and kids, right? That's Wolverine, right? Who seems like a hero on the outside, but who's he living for? He lives for himself, right? And the fact that any good happens, it kind of convenience, right? Well, it's a world I gotta live in, so I'll do it. But even then, it's empty, right? And the death of Ivan Ilyich shows that emptiness in that he damages his side, hanging some drapes. Drapes that you know no one's gonna care about when he's dead. Meaningless, right? Yep, but he's climbing this ladder leading to nowhere, it's unstable. He falls, he bruises his side. That bruise, as an illustration for sin, spreads throughout his body, so much so that he he can taste it in his mouth and it leaves him with a bitter taste. And that bitter taste turns him bitter towards everybody else, so that he can't even recognize any good that his wife does anymore. He only sees everyone through bitterness because he's so self-absorbed, he's so self-consumed, he doesn't know how to love other people that he can't even recognize love that is being passed on to him through his wife, right? And his kids, through his kids, through his priest. And that's the danger. When you are living your life as the main character, everyone becomes an obstacle rather than everyone being an opportunity to love. And uh we uh I somebody said it once, a pastor had said it once, that the inability to see what is lovely in other people is not a fault in the people, it's a fault in you. And if we believe that we are the image bearers of Christ, then that doesn't only apply to you, that applies to others around you. And we need to, Jesus said, whatever you do unto others, you have done unto me. And whatever you do not do unto others, you have also neglected in me. And that's where we get into the have to and must.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

You are neglecting a virtue that is supposed to be part of who you are if you are uniting yourself with Christ in serving other people who are in need, in you know, visiting the widows and the orphans in their time of need, as James says, right, as caring for your wife as Christ loves the church.

SPEAKER_05:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And we as husbands and and fathers, we are the priests of our home, as St. John Chrysostom says, our home is a little church, and we are to love and serve our home with the same humility and and um servant-like heart that Christ had and laying his his life down for the church. So we lay we should lay our life down and show the gentleness of Christ, the goodness of Christ. Um exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, when Fonzo was like, We're gonna read Tolstoy, I was like, oh, okay. But I think the beauty in it was that it's speaking to the human experience. So it's gonna be relevant, like you said, when it was written, a hundred years later, you know, or even now, like 2025, there are things that are true now. Ivan, you know, running away from the things that were painful, like his marriage, or even towards the end of his life, reflecting on his happy childhood, it was too painful to remember. Um, and when we think about our childhood, like there were things that were painful, but there were things that were beautiful too. So I think even relating to Ivan in that, because he's just a person, and he may have lived in that time, but we're experiencing the same thing, maybe a little different in modern times, but same things. We're running away from pain, we're running away from childhood, and we're just trying to distract ourselves and numb ourselves. And I think what you said was beautiful is he had everything he wanted right there. He was just not pressing into the hard things of being a father, being a husband, and like through that hard work, he was gonna get a great reward. And I think at the end, the saddest thing was the words of like, it's not right, it's not right, but it was too late.

SPEAKER_03:

Look at that. You made it to the end. Thank you so much. Don't forget, like, subscribe, share with friends and family. If you've been edified or you found this thought-provoking, we hope that you can help us share the message of Christ's love for his people, for the earth, for the world. We are cloud of witnesses, and you can find us again over at Patreon, search cloud of witnesses, and we have the entire unedited. I think we talked for like an hour and 10, hour and 15 minutes about this. Get it all right now over at Patreon. We will see you on the next one. God bless.