From the throes of death Ivan Ilych proclaims,

"There is one bright spot there at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more and more rapidly-in inverse ration to the square of the distance from death...Resistance is impossible...If only I could understand what it is all for But that too is impossible.... There is no explanation! Agony, death...What for?" (Tolstoy, 147).

Jack inquires of his family:

"Why can't we be intelligent about death?" I said.

"It's obvious."

"It is?"

"Ivan Ilych screamed for three days. That's about as intelligent as we get. Tolstoy himself struggled to understand. He feared it terribly."

"It's almost as though our fear is what brings it on. If we could learn not to be afraid we could live forever...."

" Do you think your death is premature?" he said.

"Every death is premature. There's no scientific reason why we can't live a hundred and fifty years. Some people actually do it, according to a headline I saw at the supermarket."

"Do you think it's a sense of incompleteness that causes you the deepest regret? There are things you still hope to accomplish. Work to be done, intellectual challenges to be faced."

"The deepest regret is death. The only thing to face is death. This is all I think about. There's only one issue here. I want to live." (Delillo, 283).

Works Cited

Delillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.

Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories. New York: A Signet Classic, 1960.

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