Ivan Ilych: A Simply, ordinary life is terrible?

     I believe that the quote from the beginning of Chapter Two of The Death of Ivan Ilych, "Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible" (Tolstoy) is Tolstoy trying to foreshadow Ivan Ilych's perspective on life later on in the novel. During the last few chapters, we see Ivan Ilych completely question weather he had lived his life the right way. It is not to say that Ivan Ilych had indeed lived a terrible life; however, it does specify probably one of the biggest questions from the story. Did Ivan Ilych live his life correctly, and was it so terrible? Ivan truly suffers with this idea that he had not lived his life the correct way or that his life would be meaningless.

Another way of perceiving the beginning of Chapter 2 could be to take the quotation as a summary of Chapter 1. In Chapter 1, the readers see that nobody truly cared about Ivan Ilych at his funeral and that therefore perhaps his life was simply and ordinary and therefore most terrible.