Tolstoy's story, and even the title, is clearly unsettling. But it's not a story about death, it's about life. Tolstoy's narrative shines a light on a life lived on borrowed terms. It was a life that was unquestioned, unexamined, and, in the final analysis, unclaimed. Ivan Ilyich was respectable, even successful, but still a hollow man left on his deathbed with little more than the torment of introspection.
"You'd think, wouldn't you, that if you were immensely powerful and rich like Elon Musk and all these other tech bros and members of that podcast community," the former politico told The Guardian, "that you'd reflect on your good fortune compared with most other people?"