What accident to what part of his body sets Ivan on a course of slow, horrifying death? Into how many numbered sections is the story of Ivan Ilych divided?

In the wake of Romanticism & into Realism: Mallarmé, Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog”

(a) First, read the introduction to Realism .
(b) Keeping those ideas on realism in mind and drawing upon them as you respond to this set of inquiries, which may seem uncharacteristic for this class, be prepared for a peppering of formalist questions about your reading of Leo Tolstoy and “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”:  What two best-known novels did Tolstoy write? Who is considered the other “great” Russian novelist, and what are his two best-known novels?

Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych follows what middle-class profession? Does Ivan’s marriage reflect a middle-class attitude toward marriage, in that middle-class people tend to get married to any reasonably suitable person as soon as marriage becomes economically and socially possible and desirable? What accident to what part of his body sets Ivan on a course of slow, horrifying death? Into how many numbered sections is the story of Ivan Ilych divided?  How does the irritation of Ivan’s wife and daughter with his illness reflect middle-class attitudes toward sickness and death?

In general, how are we in the middle class tolerant/intolerant of sickness and death? Who is the only non-family member of Ivan’s household to show compassion and understanding for him?  Ivan’s final agony occurs over how many days?

Formalist critics love to note the symbolism connecting Ivan to whom? What question about his former life bothers Ivan almost to the moment he dies?  Once he resolves this question, he is able to get outside of himself. The pain doesn’t go away, but what other people is he able to think about instead of himself?
(c) What are your thoughts about such Formalist questions as those above?