There is a famous phrase in <em>The Death of Ivan Ilych</em> that says:
<em>"Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible."</em>
Tolstoy thinks Ivan's life had been the most terrible because it lacked meaningful goals and deep connections to people. Ivan lived in the way that society deemed acceptable and admirable, which means that he was dominated by ambition, social status, and the desire to always achieve more and want more in order to be better than others. His only goals in life were to climb the social ladder and tolerate his unhappy marriage. His social relations were not built for meaningful reasons. Instead, they were a consequence of social convention. All of these reasons blinded him to the important things in life, making his life terrible.
