1. Pick any one particular theme in Tolstoy’s novel (you may limit yourself to the first eight chapters) and analyze it from an Epicurean and/ or a Schopenhauerian point of view. I recommend, when applicable, that you use relevant quotations of conversations or scenes across different chapters (without overdoing it), which would make sure that you have adequately developed the theme and demonstrated its significance for the novel.
2. Analyze any one aspect of the bourgeois mores of Tolstoy’s (or Ivan Ilyich’s) society on which the novel casts a critical lens. Again, to adequately develop your response, use relevant quotations of conversations or scenes, when applicable, without overdoing it.