Explain how greed appears in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Hedda Gabler.

"Greed" is present in these two works not so much in the conventional sense of avarice for money or possessions, as in the valuing of the material life over the spiritual one.
Ivan Ilyich, though a man without glaring faults of any sort, has lived in the normal way people do, for work and for the support of his family and the ordinary things of earthly life. So have his wife and daughter. When he becomes ill, it's as if this is the first time he realizes that he is vulnerable and that earthly life will come to an end. His wife and daughter still don't sense that basic truth, and seem to have little empathy, just wanting to go on, uninterrupted, with their own material concerns. When he comes back from the doctor and tries to tell them what he has learned about his illness, they are unconcerned, more interested in going out shopping than in listening to him. The only person who does have a degree of empathy is Ilyich's footman, Gerasim. We're told that Gerasim is of peasant background, and so, being part of a class that has never had material wealth, he understands Ivan Ilyich's plight in the way middle-class people and the aristocrats cannot.
Hedda Gabler finds her marriage boring and empty because the rarefied, intellectual world of her husband is meaningless to her. One could conclude that Hedda's "greed" is based on a wish for a level of excitement and action (partly requiring money her husband Tesman does not have) that's lacking in her marriage. But it's also a more fundamental emptiness about life in general that she feels. Hedda emerges as a personality always in need of something more than a basic, comfortable life. The way she plays around with a gun is symbolic of this desire, or greed if we will, for thrills, for danger. The attitudes of both Tesman and Thea concerning Ejlert's destroyed manuscript are inappropriate and ridiculous to her. But behind this there is an existential incompleteness in her character, deeper and more radical than the unhappy materialism of the people in Tolstoy's novella. The linking element is the absence of "higher" values, with which both Tolstoy and Ibsen find fault, and this accounts for the characters' materialism and greed.

In Hedda Gabler, there are several different types of greed. George Tesman, Hedda's husband, and Eilert Løvborg are greedy for a certain type of esteem as writers and scholars and for greatness in their fields. Tesman is also greedy for social standing. The central conflict of the play is the men's competition over esteem and prestige. Hedda herself is greedy for several things: the lifestyle she feels is her due because of her birth, the admiration of men, and self-determination. This brings her into conflict with her husband and with Thea Elvsted, who is greedy for her role as a muse and inspiration to Løvborg. Judge Brack's main form of greed is lust.
Ivan Ilyich is a character primarily motivated by greed for material goods and power. His marriage and his career are focused on attaining these, and it is not until he becomes ill that he realizes that his pursuit of material goods has not brought him happiness. Praskovya Fyodorovna, his wife, is also more concerned about her husband's salary and pension than about him as a person—she also illustrates that greedy people live unhappy lives.