Well, poor Ivan is in the thick of it now.
So much to say but I want to quickly go back and talk a little about Tolstoy’s relation to Ivan.
If you’ve read Henri Troyat’s masterful biography of Tolstoy, you’ll know that Tolstoy and his wife, Sonia, had an epic and somewhat rocky marriage. Tolstoy used his marriage in stories like this one, and “The Kreutzer Sonata.” and “The Devil,” sometimes to Sonia’s embarrassment and consternation.