Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” are similar in many ways, but different in others too. There is illness and death in both, and the time to choose life or death arises in both plots. One character chooses to live and the other has no choice, but drives himself mad before he meets Death. The human existence is approached differently in the two texts, the main character of the separate texts differ on how they each live their lives. One is adventurous and the other is a “stick to the plan” kind of man and lives the way he thinks society wants him to live. The endings are quite similar, both end with death, and with death comes with realization of how the living are when facing death, they are fake and pretend quite often. Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” are similar in many …show more content…
There is illness and death in both, and the time to choose life or death arises in both plots. One character chooses to live and the other has no choice, but drives himself mad before he meets Death. The human existence is approached differently in the two texts, the main character of the separate texts differ on how they each live their lives. One is adventurous and the other is a “stick to the plan” kind of man and lives the way he thinks society wants him to live. The endings are quite similar, both end with death, and with death comes with realization of how the living are when facing death, they are fake and pretend quite often. The character’s of Tolstoy’s and Conrad’s publishings have completely different ways of living life.The frailty of life is a hidden subject in both “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Heart of Darkness.” Both Ivan and Marlow have their own philosophical views about life, but in the end, both have hatred for fake, pretend