One of the Top 3 Reasons University Professors Throw Away And/Or Flunk Student Essays: Comma Splices (Other 2: Run-Ons and Fragments)
Common Splices I Frequently See in Student Essays
Ivan failed to find meaning, instead he found the hedonic treadmill of consumerism.
Vanity takes over Ivan's life, it begins in his childhood and blossoms like a rank flower.
Ivan and his wife are popular socialites, however, it is known that they truly despise each other.
Ivan is overcome by envy and the paranoid belief that his position in life is never good enough, additionally, he cannot be happy. Even when he gets his way.
The libido ostentandi is Latin for the need to show off, it is a major theme in The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
Ivan finds false meaning through his ambition, in contrast, Viktor Frankl finds meaning by attempting to be worthy of his suffering.
Ivan gets a terminal disease, in fact, his disease is beyond the physical realm, it penetrates into the spiritual, thus we can say that his "death" is both physical and spiritual.
It is difficult to sympathize with Ivan, after all, he is as petty and superficial as the very people who scorn him.
Ivan and his wife invest enormous amounts of energy impressing their fake friends with all the crap they buy, unbelievably, they ignore working on the substance of their dysfunctional marriage, as a result, they live a hellish existence of mutual hatred.
On one hand, Ivan wishes to be loved by his colleagues, on the other hand, he has no interest in loving anyone but himself, this is because he is overcome by vanity. Which is a disease that he tries unsuccessfully to ignore.
Ivan's tumultuous, hate-soaked marriage, it can be argued, is the cause of his death, indeed, the marriage is so stressful it compromises his immune system, this makes him vulnerable to disease.
Ivan is a coward, clearly he is a man who killed his soul so he could conform to the Assumed Consensus, an imaginary authority that provides Ivan his template for what he believes is the "good life."
Student Writing Errors Using "Who/Whom" and "That/Which"
Who and Whom on the Grammar Monster
Grammar Link for that and which
Grammar Tips for which and that
Grammar Quiz for which, that, who
Essay 4: In a 6-page research paper, analyze the life of Ivan Ilych in the context of Man’s Search for Meaning.
How Does Ivan Violate the Principles Contained in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning?
Sample Thesis:
Ivan's failure to adhere to meaning as prescribed by Viktor Frankl results in his death evidenced by ________________, _______________, ___________________, ________________, and _______________________.
- The human condition is suffering and the only viable response to suffering is to find meaning. We must therefore acknowledge that there is a purpose in life, greater than the purpose we find in creative work and passive enjoyment, which “admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.” It is imperative that we are motivated first and foremost by this higher purpose. Without a purpose, our life drags on day after day in a tiring monotony that we try to fill with consumerism, addictions, texting friends, etc. Ivan rejects suffering for a life of consumerism. He uses consumerism as his false meaning. Because his life "drags on," as Frankl says, he must consume more and more. Let's be clear: Ivan has a purpose in life, but it's not the purpose Frankl is explaining to us. Frankl is explaining a purpose rooted in us evolving into our Higher Selves through listening, fortitude, and sacrifice; Ivan, on the other hand, has a purpose, the glorification of self, which leads, ironically enough, to the erosion of self, and its eventual death. So it makes sense in your essay to contrast what Frankl means by purpose (not just any purpose) and Ivan's purpose: self-aggrandizement.
- “Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress” as was endured in the concentration camps. Acknowledging this freedom, we must defy being a “plaything of circumstance” and thus we must understand that “there is a danger inherent in the teaching of man’s ‘nothingbutness,’ the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances.” We are neither pawn nor victim. Rather, we possess an inner freedom that cannot be lost no matter how extreme the circumstances. This inner freedom allows us to be worthy of our suffering. And being worthy of our suffering is the ultimatum life presents us: Either be worthy of our suffering, or not. In fact, Ivan becomes a pawn of his society, as superficial as everyone else, a man who is never worthy of his suffering. Ivan has the very mentality Frankl warns us about: One of entitlement on one hand and victimization and self-pity on the other.
- Life presents us with the moral imperative to treat our life as something of significance and consequence and the converse is also true: We must not despise our lives and treat our lives as if they were of no consequence at all. As Frankl writes: “And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom: which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.”Ivan allows himself to be robbed of his own freedom by becoming a slave to vanity and consumerism. He becomes in essence a "plaything of circumstance."
- There are moral absolutes in this world evidenced in part by Frankl dividing the world into two races of people, decent and indecent. In Ivan's world, everyone, except for Gerasim, is indecent.
- We have to do more than imagine a life of meaning; we must actually live it. Frankl writes: “Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” We are additionally accountable for the responsibilities life demands of us. Ivan on the other hand never takes responsibility for his misery. He blames everyone else for his unhappiness and sees himself as a victim.
- We must embrace suffering, the finiteness of life, and death to maximize and complete our life. “Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.” But in Ivan's world, everyone is committed to denying death, by living a fairy tale of consumerism and vanity and self-absorption.
- We must radically alter our attitude by changing our orientation from “What do I expect from life?” to “What does life expect from me?” This question brings up our number one responsibility in life, to embrace meaning when it knocks on our door. We don’t choose meaning; meaning chooses us. In Ivan's world, everyone is on the lookout for what can life give to me?
- There is no One Size Fits All Meaning. Every person’s meaning is specific to his or her circumstances.
- We must confront the emotions that seem so overwhelming; otherwise those emotions will devour us. Quoting from Spinoza, Frankl writes: “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.” It’s another way of saying that when we confront our demons, they often lose their power over us. Ivan does not confront his cowardice and the hatred he feels for his wife in a phony marriage until it is too late.
- We must not abuse and squander freedom by imitating our oppressors. For example, if our boss abuses us, we should not later in life abuse our workers when we ascend to positions of high authority. When Ivan is promoted to high places in office, he abuses his subordinates as a petty form of power and pleasure.
- Meaning cannot be found within ourselves; it must be found in the world. As Frankl writes: “By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
- No matter how despicable and worthless our lives have been, we are called to redeem ourselves by living out the essential rule of logotherapy: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” Sadly, Ivan did not take his life seriously until he was on his deathbed: too little, too late.
- Only a few people are capable of reaching great spiritual heights but the difficulty and small percentage of people who do reach such great heights does not abnegate our responsibility for pursuing a life of higher meaning.
Ivan Ilyich Lived a Failed Life. That Was His Death. A Successful Life Means Owning Yourself. Ivan Never Owned His Life.
What does it mean to "own your life"?
One. To own your self means having a sense of irony about your successes and failures so that your emotions aren't tied to external events. As a wise man once said, "When you think you're rising in life, you're actually falling; and when you think you're falling, you're actually rising."
Two. You are self-possessed, which means you understand your motivations as opposed to being controlled by the compulsions of your unconscious impulses.
Three. You've achieved a relative integrity between your public duty and private desires as opposed to "living a lie."
Four. You have the power of conviction in all that you do and never have to apologize to anyone for "falling short" or surrendering to self-complacent mediocrity.
Five. You avoid the 3 Traps of Life, all of which afflict Ivan: despair, vainglorious pride, and contented mediocrity.
Owning yourself: This means you play the game (because to a certain degree you know you have to) but you know the game is a joke. Therefore, you don't base your identity on playing the game.
The wise man plays the game and knows it's a game. In contrast, the fool plays the game lets the game take over his whole life, resulting in a life of vanity, narcissism, egotism, solipsism, and loneliness.
The fool is blind to his vanity, his vain motivations, which make him compulsive. He is the opposite of self-possessed.
McMahon's Thesis Examples
What is really Ivan's "death"? It is spiritual in nature and results from his slavish devotion to conforming to the Assumed Consensus evidenced by ____________, ___________, ____________, and ______________.
Ivan Ilyich never owned his life, as McMahon likes to say, which translates into a life without meaning, a life doomed to languish in the existential vacuum, evidenced by ____________, ________________, ______________, and ________________.
Types of People Who Own Themselves
Misfits, the persectuted, outcasts, people who were bullied in high school.
They never enjoyed approval from the assumed consensus so they had to create themselves and in essence own themselves.
Lexicon
1. "proper" or "correct" life: The facade we build based on others' expectations of success and happiness that always cuts a wedge between our inner life and our outer life. The more we commit to the "proper" life, the greater our self-betrayal and eventual self-destruction.
2. Provisional self-interest: selfishness based on a futile attempt to compensate for a failed inner life by committing with all our desperation to the "proper" life.
3. schadenfreude: The disgusting and perverse pleasure we experience when we see others fail or suffer humilation, rejection, or some other setback. Schadenfreude attests to our Darwinian hard-wiring, which compels us to see others as competitition suitable to be destroyed as we dominate Planet Earth.
4. Immortal Hypnosis Disorder: The majority of the world sleep-walks under the cloud of IHD, a denial of death so engrained that we don't even know we're in denial.
The Assumed Consensus reinforces this denial. "It's impolite to bring up death, our mortality."
We commit our entire lives to reinforcing this denial and become hostile and fearful when anyone compromises our condition of IHD. Even a person getting cancer is threatening our IHD and as a result we resent the sick and the dying.
5. Sycophantic decorum as dictated by the Assumed Consensus: The kind of BS and butt-kissing that becomes so common that we take it for granted as the way we have to be in order to ascend the social and professional ladder. In turn, if we should reach a high position, we expect our underlings to kiss our butts with the same commitment we used when we were butt-kissers.
6. Petulant malcontent: A whiner who sees the world as owing him pleasure while this parasitic whiner does not have any plans on giving back ANYTHING to the world from which he expects everything.
7. Intractable Marital Hostility Immune Disorder: When the husband and wife learn over time to hate each other and only relate to each other as enemies causing so much constant stress that they slowly kill each other by breaking down the other's immune system. This is why Ivan Ilych came down with cancer and died. His marriage was a hell that compromised his immune system.
8. Existential Vacuum: We are born to crave meaning as our ultimate goal. When we lack meaning, we experience the existential vacuum: We become anxious, desperate, and too often compelled to fill the void with misguided obsessions, goals, chimeras, mirages, distractions, and false panaceas.
These misguided passions can be broken down into 4 overlapping categories.
One: hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure as the highest good. Hedonism always fails us because we acclimate to pleasure so that more and more of the stimulus is required to activate our pleasure sensors. When we become more and more sensitized and numb to pleasure stimulus, we experience the "hedonic treadmill."
Two. Darwinian Dominance, the pursuit of power as the highest good.
Three. Libido Ostentandi, the preoccupation with creating a facade that makes others convinced we are happy and good and successful so that we can, by watching others' admire us, fool ourselves into believing we are happy and good and successful.
Four. Reckless nihilism, the pursuit of addiction-induced oblivion and mindlessness to take away the agony from languishing through a life without meaning.
9. Frankl's Ultimatum: Either live a life of service to others and be worthy of your suffering or live a futile, lonely existence in which you are committed to the feeble pursuit of satisfying your pleasures, your appetites, and your vanity.
10. Short Version of Frankl's Ultimatum: Either be worthy of your suffering by committing yourself to a purposeful life of service to others or act as if life is about consuming your selfish pleasures.
11. Ache, the adult realization that you are not Number One in the universe and the understanding that your desires will always outstrip your capacity to satisfy them. Recognizing Ache is the first step to becoming an adult and developing a viable orientation to the world, an orientation based on meaning.
12. Mutual Marital Commodification: Ivan Ilyich and his wife Praskovya Fedorovna hate each other because the foundation of the marriage is based on MMC: Deep down they know they don't love each other as human beings. Rather, they use each other as commodities. Thus the very foundation of their marriage is based on mutual disrespect.
And what are they using each other for as commodities? Trophies essentially or to refer to an earlier lexicon term, they use each other to achieve the libido ostentandi.
Ten. What evidence in Part IV suggests neither Ivan nor his wife have ever matured or found meaning? At one point, they fight over the costs of party expenses to the point that they almost kill each other and get a divorce. Are the party costs the real issue? No, the real issue is that they live in a loveless marriage and they know deep down that they are wasting their lives on a fake marriage. As such, they lack self-respect and respect for each other.
Eleven. Why is Ivan’s wife torn by feelings of wanting Ivan to die and not wanting him to die?
Twelve. What is the response of Ivan’s wife and daughter to his worsening illness? See Part IV near the end.
Thirteen. How, so to speak, does Ivan see the vultures circling at the end of Part IV?
Fourteen. What evidence is there that Ivan is becoming more and more ostracized for his fatal illness? End of Part IV and Part V.
Fifteen. Ivan feels he is going insane in Part V. Explain. People live with their illusions about death while Ivan has lost his. The disparity between his worldview and theirs is surreal. Imagine, if you will, having a dream that you're on a school playground and everyone is having fun and laughing at which time you see a ferocious dinosaur, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, approaching from a distant field. You scream to warn the others but they ignore you and continue playing. That's how Ivan feels.
If You Want to Read the Story Online, Here It Is:
Revisiting the Writing Assignment
In the beginning of Part II we read that "Ivan Illych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." Develop a thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components that explain this opening line in the context of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Successful, A-level essays will include additional examples from personal experience.
The same assignment worded differently:
Ivan is obsessed with a "proper" and "correct" life and those things that were "proper" and "correct" failed him. Explain by developing a thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components.
Failed Thesis Statements That Address the Essay Topic
Too general or broad
Too obvious
Thesis doesn't lend itself to mapping components or body paragraph topic sentences
Better example of a thesis that addresses the topic:
Story Questions
1. How does provisional self-interest raise its ugly head in the opening scene? Death is not a time to contemplate the loss of life, the meaning of life, or the service we might assert to the loved ones of the dead. Rather, death is nothing more than a possible job promotion. One less person exists between us and our goal. The death of others should be celebrated.
The second thing death means is this: "Oh, crap, I've got to go to a funeral. What a pain in the ass, man."
2. What is the role of schadenfreude in the opening scene? The failure, demise, and even death of others means my possible success. And relief. "It is he who is dead and not I."
3. How in effect is death rude in the opening scene evidenced by the resentment in the men’s inner thoughts? Ivan made a mess of things. What's amazing in the opening scene is that Ivan's colleagues act as if Ivan's illness and eventual death was part of "an act," an exercise of self-attention, impudence (offensively bold, immodest behavior). "But what really was the matter with him?" "The doctors couldn't say." In other words, they question the authenticity of his illness. Somehow, Ivan's troubles were the result of a moral flaw that inconvenienced others.
4. Describe Peter’s fearful reaction to the corpse and connect that reaction with something Franz Kafka wrote: “The fear of death is the fear of an unfulfilled life.” Also, Peter is a coward who doesn't want to face the reality that death usually doesn't come instantly. Rather we suffer a long time before it arrives. Secondly, we die alone. We have to be at peace with ourselves and people in the hell of the existential vacuum are never content to be alone. They live in abject fear.
5. How does Gerasim’s acceptance of death in Part I complement Viktor Frankl’s idea that death completes life? "It's God's will. We shall all come to it someday." He accepts death as part of life. Like Frankl writes, death complements and fulfills life.
6. How are Peter and Gerasim counterparts to one another? Peter is a coward who lives a life of self-interest and as such is not worthy of suffering. Gerasim is committed to service toward others.
7. How does the opening of Part II complement Viktor Frankl’s main message about choosing meaning? "Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." As Frankl writes, the ordinary life, one of self-interest and the existential vacuum, is a form of hell.
8. In Part II, how is Ivan painted as a man who follows the morality of conformity? What is such a morality? What are its limitations?
9. How does Ivan conform to Pascal’s life of diversion and appearances?
10. How does Ivan couch his infidelity within social acceptance in Part II? How does his handling of the matter paint him as being full of B.S.?
11. With Ivan’s pursuit of power and comfort, how do you define “worldliness”? Playing the sycophant game; be a sycophant and someday have your own sycophants.
12. How is Ivan’s life a heartless life, one that’s all calculation and no heart?
13. Why does Ivan’s wife abruptly become a petulant malcontent and how is this a stereotype of the wife in marriage? In fact, Ivan too is a petulant malcontent. They hate each other because they use each others as commodities for achieving their vanity.
14. Why does Ivan try to create an existence outside of his family life and how does this support the contention made at the beginning of Part II?
15. How and why does Ivan’s marriage become a bottomless cesspool of arguments and incriminations? In other words, his marriage has become a hell from which he cannot escape except from work and adultery. Apparently, Tolstoy saw this as the common condition.
16. How does Ivan’s sense of power compensate for his impotent home life?
17. Is it possible that the stress in his marriage killed him? Broke down his immune system? Explain.
