(Tolstoy, 9)
The highly placed people he cares so much to please do not end up caring for him at his death. His friends at his funeral were simply glad “…that this had happened to Ivan Ilyich and not to him…,” (7), absorbing themselves in their own selfish tendencies and embarking themselves on the same miserable path that Ilyich took. Epictetus teaches against such manners of …show more content…
Epictetus teaches: “You would be foolish to wish that your children or your spouse would lie forever. They are mortal, just as you are, and the law of mortality is completely out of your hands,” (21), stating that at any moment a person can pass away and that death is a force of nature that no human can control. Ilyich does not believe he can die from his foolish accident: “By an effort of imagination he tried to catch this kidney and stop it, fasten it down; so little was needed, it seemed to him,” (Tolstoy, 29). It is during his final moments that he accepts his mortality, for he reflects on his life and realizes that he did not live to his full