Not far from the end of Tolstoy's great and terrifying short novel, "The Death of Ivan Illych", Ivan realizes his case is hopeless, that he is going to die of his illness. He and his consciousness will simply end. He suffers unbearable pain. He doubts God's existence, is agonized by the meaninglessness of his life, is baffled by why this is all happening to him. We read these lines:
"It seemed to him that he and his pain were being thrust into a narrow, deep black sack, and though they were being pushed further and further in they could not be pushed to the bottom...He was frightened, yet wanted to fall through the sack; he struggled yet cooperated."
As someone who suffers from claustrophobia, I read these lines and stopped and put the book down for a minute. This connection between approaching death and narrow confinement certainly seems right to me. In one sense, we all steadily fall, like Ivan, inevitably, into this narrow confinement.
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