Which theme does leo tolstoy explore in this excerpt from the death of ivan ilyich? "then what does it mean? why? it can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. but if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must i die and die in agony? there is something wrong! "maybe i did not live as i ought to have done," it suddenly occurred to him. "but how could that be, when i did everything properly? " he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible. a)humans are shortsighted and inconsiderate toward others. b)love is unpredictable and can be used to fulfill selfish needs. c)human mortality is inevitable, and it is important to live an authentic life. d)materialistic minded people cannot change no matter how difficult life becomes.

in the problem you wrote said that the taxi charges $0.070 per mile(which would be 7 cents per mile), but then in your suggested equation you have it as $0.70 per mile (which is 70 cents per mile).

the latter seems more realistic, so i will assume that the taxi costs $5.00 and charges $0.70 per mile with tolls costing an additional $3.50. and it asks you to find how far you can travel on $36.50.

let x the number of miles traveled. since the taxi charges $0.70 per mile, multiplying this by the miles traveled (x) will yield the cost of the taxi ride as far as how far it took you. then adding this amount to the cost of the taxi ($5.00) and the additional cost for the tolls ($3.50) will give you the total cost of the taxi ride ($36.50)

that is,

            (0.70)x + 5.00 + 3.50 = 36.50

adding the like terms on the left-hand side of this equation, we arrive at the following:

            (0.70)x + 8.50 = 36.50

subtracting 8.50 from both sides of the equation, we get:

            (0.70)x = 28.00

to solve for x, divide both sides of the equation above by the coefficient of x (that being, 0.70):

            x = 40

thus, you can travel up to 40 miles on $36.50