The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Novel Summary: Chapter 8

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Chapter 8

Even with the translation, Tolstoy's language is still beautiful as he details his character's last thoughts: "the gnawing, unmitigated, agonizing pain, never ceasing for an instant, the consciousness of life inexorably waning but not yet extinguished, the approach of that ever dreaded and hateful Death which was the only reality, and always the same falsity."
His wife and daughter, as well as his friends, embody this falsity.  Only Gerasim and Vasya, Tolstoy asserts, "understood and pitied him."