4. Death

Death was a fact of Tolstoy’s life from the start. He lost both of his parents during childhood and then, as a young man, Tolstoy witnessed and caused death at war. Death continued to haunt him. Whether he was writing about a war zone, a pastoral landscape, a slum, or a family estate, Tolstoy’s works are set in the ‘valley of the shadow of death’. One of Tolstoy’s missions as a writer was to remind readers of their own mortality and to make them think about how to live and love in the face of death. ‘Death’ discusses Tolstoy’s treatment of dying in Childhood, Boyhood, Youth; War and Peace; Anna Karenina; and ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’.