be an unnamed illness which does kill Ivan.
The minor accident and small bruise are deliberate on the part of Tolstoy. From the beginning of the story, almost every character, aside from Gerasim, directly or indirectly expresses the view or the hope that he or she will be unlike every other human being and avoid death. Peter Ivanovich, for example, turns away from the connection between Ivan's death and his own eventual, inevitable death at every opportunity. Looking at Ivan's body, Peter notes, "There was in that expression a reproach and a warning to the living. This warning seemed to Peter Ivanovich out of place, or at least not applicable to him" (1496).
Of course, all of his life, up to the very end, Ivan himself had felt immune to death, as if he would be the only man who never dies, who never even suffers misfortune which he somehow "deserves." At one point he is passed over for a promotion and feels as if there is something wrong in the universe, that he should alway
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