The Death of Ivan Ilyitch

He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.

They are sorry, but it will be better for them when I die.

From that moment the screaming began that continued for three days, and was so terrible that one could not hear it through two closed doors without horror.

wept like a child. He wept on account of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness

Ivan Ilych was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.

Three days of frightful suffering and the death! Why, that might suddenly, at any time, happen to me,"

The dead man lay, as dead men always lie,

"it is he who is dead and not I."

Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder to breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom was a light. What had happened to him was like the sensation one sometimes experiences in a railway carriage when one thinks one is going backwards while one is really going forwards and suddenly becomes aware of the real direction.

His mental sufferings were due to the fact that that night, as he looked at Gerasim's sleepy, good-natured face with its prominent cheek-bones, the question suddenly occurred to him: "What if my whole life has been wrong?"