As Ivan Ilyich lies dying, he begins to reevaluate his life and searches for a meaning that makes his suffering comprehensible. In "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and the other works in this volume, Tolstoy conjures characters who, tested to their limits, reveal glorious and unexpected reserves of courage or an almost inhuman malice. Two vivid parables and "The Forged Coupon," a story about crime, explore class relations after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and the connection between an ethical life and worldly matters. In "Master and Man," Tolstoy creates one of his most compelling dramas about human relationships tested in an extreme situation. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is an existential masterpiece, a biting satire that powerfully depicts the final illness and death of a bourgeois lawyer.