Question

Which lines in this excerpt from Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich together use symbolism to indicate that death is approaching?
Why deceive myself? Isn't it obvious to everyone but me that I'm dying, and that it's only a question of weeks, days...it may happen this moment. There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I'm going there! Where?" A chill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt only the throbbing of his heart.
"When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing. Then where shall I be when I am no more? Can this be dying? No, I don't want to!" He jumped up and tried to light the candle, felt for it with trembling hands, dropped candle and candlestick on the floor, and fell back on his pillow.
"What's the use? It makes no difference," he said to himself, staring with wide-open eyes into the darkness. "Death. Yes, death. And none of them knows or wishes to know it, and they have no pity for me. Now they are playing." (He heard through the door the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "It's all the same to them, but they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them. And now they are merry...the beasts!"
Anger choked him and he was agonizingly, unbearably miserable. "It is impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer this awful horror!" He raised himself.

Answer 1

The lines from this excerpt from Leo Tolstoy’s, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" that use symbolism to indicate that death is approaching are:

"There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I'm going there!"

Here, the author uses the symbols of light and dark to represent life and death. Where there is light there is life, whereas darkness means to close his eyes forever and fall into an eternal slumber.

Tolstoy also uses the references "here" and "there" to refer to life on earth and the afterlife. Ivan feels like his time in this side is ending, and that he is finally going "there," to the afterworld.