How does Ivan's quest for status, advancement, prestige, and generally the approval of others endanger his chance to live a more meaningful life?
As a society we try to find roles and fill them. We find roles that we can connect our lives to and we live up to these roles. We follow a 'cultural map' based on the roles we choose to follow. Ivan is no different. He follows the role of someone who is financially and socially successful according to our society. He works as a lawyer has a family is able to provide for them. He has a good social life with many friends is a friendly person who gets along with others. He plays cards with his fellow coworkers and works hard at playing the role of a successful male in all aspects of the role. However as Ivan suffers from terminal illness he realizes that his life was not what he thought it was. He realizes that in fact his 'success' is meaningless. His desire to live up to a role restricted him from living a truly meaningful life.
Ivan's life was based around a societal map that is a sure road to failure if you look to live a meaningful life. We spend all our lives looking for more and more acceptance and never find ourselves to be satisfied. Ivan realized that his life was miserably meaningless he was angry at his wife for her materialistic ways he felt bad for his son and he started to realize his mistakes.
Ivan's 'quest for status' was a representation of what everyone does in their sometimes with some kind of variation but essentially everyone is doing what Ivan did. Ivan's life was symbolic of our lives. He was blinded by his societal map and was not able to see through the flaws of his lifestyle and was not able to see his mistakes until he started dying. Most people live their whole lives without thinking back on the path they chosen to take and what it has led to. Many people do not realize that the roles and map society presents us with do not lead to meaningful lives. The story of Ivan's life signifies the story of most of our societies life and the same thing that restricts him from having no meaning in his life is the same thing that restricts us. Basically Ivan is us and we are Ivan.
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You've got the fundamental idea clearly and strongly.
ReplyDeleteFor improvement, consider the following suggestions:
1. I think you could have compressed this essay by 50% and still said everything you said. I understand that's not necessarily the goal when trying to write an essay of a certain length quickly.
2. You're claiming (provocatively) that not only did I.I. wasted his life - and that most of us do to, in just about the exact same way - following meaningless cultural maps that emphasize status (and I would add, entertainment and ease). So, a Judge type dude in feudal Russia in 1886 was faced with essentially the same existential choices as urban youth in the US in the digital age? (I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying this would be a point worth exploring).
3. If "Ivan is us and we are Ivan", should we pray for cancer for ourselves and our loved ones? Or is it possible to learn from Ivan's (fictitious) example? Does this art effectively challenge the following of unconsidered cultural maps? Why do "many people not realize" the meaninglessness of their received cultural imperatives? What should we do about that? Is it possible that insitutional change (however circumscribed by the basic structure of an imperial capitalist system) could help people ask these kind of questions? Could families or churches or other organizations help people learn to make more 'big picture' meaningful analyses? Or should this be the role of art - in which case, how do Kanye and Shawn seem to be doing on this project? etc.