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the death of ivan ilyich, chapters 5-8: mastery test
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what opinion about russian society does leo tolstoy express in this excerpt from the death of ivan ilyich?
the awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost
indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant odour) and this was done by that very decorum which
he had served all his life long. he saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position. only gerasim recognized
it and pitied him. and so ivan ilyich felt at ease only with him. he felt comforted when gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all night long)
and refused to go to bed, saying: "don't you worry, ivan ilyich. i'll get sleep enough later on," or when he suddenly became familiar and
exclaimed: "if you weren't sick it would be another matter, but as it is, why should i grudge a little trouble? " gerasim alone did not lie;
everything showed that he alone understood the facts of the case and did not consider it necessary to disguise them, but simply felt sorry
for his emaciated and enfeebled master. once when ivan ilyich was sending him away he even said straight out: "we shall all of us die, so
why should i grudge a little trouble? "-expressing the fact that he did not think his work burdensome, because he was doing it for a dying
man and hoped someone would do the same for him when his time came.
oa. the peasant class in nineteenth-century russia was full of honest and compassionate people.
ob. educated professionals gained influence in russian society in the nineteenth century.
oc. in the nineteenth century, middle-class russians were rich and well-educated.
od. peasants more readily accepted unpleasant facts of life, while the middle class tried to deny
them
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i don't know and i don't care .

it is the : d because is true

with mrs. linde, nora reveals her insensitivity and lack of shame about the forgery she committed. she implies that mrs. linde has obviously aged since they last met 10 years earlier, which accounts for nora’s inability to recognize her old friend. although nora seems sympathetic to mrs. linde’s plight, she can’t seem to control herself from boasting about her three children, her husband’s recent promotion, and how good she feels to finally have some money to spend. in a way, she seems to be flaunting her good fortune in front of mrs. linde who, deprived of all these benefits, has come to ask nora for . it is also through her interactions with mrs. linde that we realize something deeper lies under nora’s seemingly childish exterior. she reveals the secret of her forgery to mrs. linde and seems to see herself as quite resourceful for having done it.

in the company of dr. rank, nora is freer than she is with her own husband. she openly laughs with joy at knowing that all the other bank employees will be under her husband’s control. she offers dr. rank a macaroon, apparently forgetting that he knows she is forbidden to eat them. she then quickly covers for herself by claiming that mrs. linde brought them. nora seems much more assertive and free with these other characters, as well as unabashedly willing to scheme, lie, and justify her transgressions as altruistic.  

krogstad provides an interesting parallel to nora. like nora, he too is guilty of committing forgery, for which torvald condemns him and decides to fire him. although krogstad is a man and nora a woman, their crimes of forgery unite them. in fact, krogstad might represent what nora would be like if she were a man and were not strictly scrupulous like her husband is. for example, she tells mrs. linde that "a barrister's profession is such an uncertain thing, especially if he won't undertake unsavoury cases; and naturally torvald has never been willing to do that." perhaps nora would have delved into the unsavory, given how opposite she is to her husband. krogstad's is also the only harsh voice of reality that nora is forced to hear, and that is because he blackmails her for her regaining his job at the bank. finally, torvald’s reaction to krogstad’s forgery seems to foreshadow his harsh and cold reaction to nora’s forgery.