World Literature Paper
“Solzhenitsyn use of selected language in justifying the main essence of the story”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer of the emotional piece One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich uses Russian traditional oral style skaz ( from Russian ‘skazat’ - to say or tell) and it explains the author’s general skaz approach in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsyn uses skaz to emphasize the experience of the camps and life as a prisoner. In order to attain gulag camp’s unfeigned internal atmosphere, he chose to highlight the harsh language and swearing, in relationships between zeks, it means the prisoners and guards. Also, use of animal comparison is significant accent to Russian culture, which most likely comes from legends and tales. Forced-labor camps prisoners, divided into squads are depending on the discretion of guards or squad leaders. Sense of community and inside-unwritten camp rules are shaping gulag zek’s everyday life.
Author involves three kinds of narration techniques - as a prisoner, used method is called skaz, when wants to emphasize communication between Ivan and other zeks “So leave envy to those who always think the radish in the other fellow’s hand is bigger than ours. Shukhov knows life and never opens his belly to what doesn’t belong to him.” (p 124) ; as an educated narrator with specific details about ongoing “With the same rapid movements as before, Shukhov hung up his coat on a crossbeam and pulled what he wanted from the mattress: a pair of mittens, a second pair of old foot rags, a length of rope, and a piece of cloth with tapes at each end.” (p 22); and Ivan himself using third person and mainly recounting flashbacks and daydreams “You couldn’t write and describe t...
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...p struggles and are able to behold weekday's 'small victories' called luck of someone's kindness - “Shukhov went to sleep fully consent. He'd had many strokes of luck that day: they hadn't put him in the cells; they hadn't sent his squad to the settlement; he’d swiped a bowl of kasa at dinner; the squad leader had fixed the rates well; he’d built a wall and enjoyed doing it; he’d smuggled that bit of hacksaw blade through; he’d earned a favor from Tsezar that evening; he’d bought that tobacco. And he hadn’t fallen ill. He’d got over it.” (p 139). And “A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.” (p 139). Daily evaluation of those 'small victories' came with heading home - life experience shaped through self-management.
Works Cited
World Literature Paper
“Solzhenitsyn use of selected language in justifying the main essence of the story”
"Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom." Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. .
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich takes place in a camp run by the Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps. This camp is called a Gulag which was established for people who were working against the soviet union under the man named Stalin. You would go there for disobeying, not believing in what stalin wanted the perfect soviet society to be. One of the men named Ivan denisovich told his story about the life in the Gulags. When ivan was sent there for being a soldier. He would always wake up on time and do the work he was demanded of. But one of the days he fell ill. he hoped he was going to be put on the sick list. So that day he decided to lay in bed for a few minutes longer. Instead the guard so rudely does tell him to get up and said you're coming with me. When you disobeyed the guards orders you were sent to a prison cell.A guard named TarTar took him to the punishment cells for his tardiness but instead he makes him clean the floor in the guard room. This job was for After doing this he goes to eat breakfast which consists of bread and water. When he was done with breakfast he went to the doctor because he felt ill but the guy took his temperature and sent him to do some work. The only thing that kept him moving and fighting was having people he was close with which was necessarily his gang consisting of tiuryn, tsezar, aloysha a baptist not being able to have his own religion. As Shukhov he said “Come on, boys, don’t let it get you down! It’s only a Power Station, but we’ll make it a home away from home.” ( page, Schukov wanted to make knifes with the scrap metal he found. He wanted to be able to fight back with the soviet guards in hopes to go home. But when he was searched at first he remembered that ...
Being one of the greatest Russian writers of 20th century, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had a unique talent that he used to truthfully depict the realities of life of ordinary people living in Soviet era. Unlike many other writers, instead of writing about “bright future of communism”, he chose to write about everyday hardships that common people had to endure in Soviet realm. In “Matryona’s Home”, the story focuses on life of an old peasant woman living in an impoverished collectivized village after World War 2 . In the light of Soviet’s propaganda of creating a new Soviet Nation, the reader can observe that Matryona’s personality and way of life drastically contradicted the desired archetype of New Soviet Man. Like most of the people in her village,
Intro with Thesis: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn that documents totalitarian communism through the eyes of an ordinary prisoner in a Soviet labor camp. This story describes the protagonist, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, as he freezes and starves with the other prisoners, trying to survive the remainder of his ten-year sentence. In this story, Solzhenitsyn uses the struggles in the camp as a way to represent the defaults of the Soviet Union under Stalin’s regime. By doing this, Solzhenitsyn uses authoritative oppression in his labour camps to demonstrate the corrupt nature of the Soviet system.
Shukhov is a likeable and yet somewhat naïve fellow who is just like everybody else. In fact, what really makes this book remarkable is not Shukhov himself. What makes it special is that, even though at first glance the story may seem to be about Shukhov, it is actually a tale of events and common occurrences that could happen to anyone. The book is not just a detail of one day in the life of Ivan, it is a relatable story of what could happen to anyone shoved into a Russian prison camp. Ivan’s life in the book is shown to be nothing more than a picture of the thousands of lives that were lost or destroyed in the Stalinist camps. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is not one character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is the picture of “anyman.” Using the depiction of the beliefs, hopes, and need to survive that would arise in a common prisoner Solzhenitsyn creates a story of the victory of humane principles over corruption.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken writer, who used his short stories to be vocal about the reality of Soviet society. Many pieces of Soviet literature were regulated, in which the reality was masked by Soviet Union propaganda. Solzhenitsyn broke past this wall barrier in his two short stories, Matryona’s Home and An Incident at Krechetovka Station. Both novellas describe the harsh reality of Soviet life, the former in rural Russia, and the latter during World War II at an army station. While having different and distinct plots and characters, both pieces of literature play on key themes of the real Soviet life. Matryona’s Home emphasizes Soviet society’s blatant disregard of Russian tradition, while An Incident at Krechetovka comments on the society’s blind trust on the failing Soviet system. Both of Solzhenitsyn’s novellas focus on the perpetual suffering that all individuals went through in Soviet society.
Solzhenitsyn believed that it was nearly impossible to have truly free thoughts under the prison camp conditions described in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, or in any situation where there is an authoritarian ruler. In a pris...
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a professed Christian. However, according to some critics, this does not necessarily make his writings "Christian" (Schmemann 39). Biblical principles can clearly be identified in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. They can be seen through Solzhenitsyn's views on the world as a divine creation, the nature of evil, and faith in the future.
Character Strength in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel about survival. Solzhenitsyn shows us how even in seemingly atrocious circumstances each person can find sources of strength that gives them the will to carry on. Many of the things that the prisoners think of as their sources of strengths would mean nothing to us, but if one thinks about it, without them we would perhaps lose the will to carry on. Most of the prisoners have more than one source of strength, perhaps subconsciously they have made their own fail safes.
The following literary analysis is over “The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” which was written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Who is a former Nobel Prize winner for literature. The book at least the abridged version is broken into several different parts, seven to be exact. The book starts with his arrest and the law of the Soviet Union, then he talks about the way the labor camps were basically created to break down a man and kill him. To begin the book Aleksandr was arrested for writing a letter to friends criticizing the government and mainly Stalin. Back in those days of the Soviet Union no one was allowed to talk bad about the government or they were arrested and convicted of the crime. Aleksandr talks about the
Throughout the 20th century, many countries were ruled by totalitarian leaders who were ready to commit many horrible deeds in order to achieve their goals. Josef Stalin, the leader of Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953, is the perfect example of a despotic ruler, who was responsible for the deaths of millions of people. He believed that communism would transform the Soviet Union into a perfect nation, with an ideal society where everyone would be treated equally. However, in order to achieve this perfection, all external and, more importantly, internal enemies had to be destroyed. Instead of a perfect nation, Stalin created a system, which was based on fear and denunciation, where killing of the so-called "enemies of the nation" became a sport, where Stalin's representatives competed against each other on the basis of the number of "enemies" killed. Throughout almost three decades, millions of innocent people were either killed or put into labour camps. The author of the book himself, was sentenced to eight years in a concentration camp for his anti-Soviet views, which he expressed in writing, and through the characters of his novel, Solzhenitsyn portrays his personal beliefs. Most of the characters in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" are innocent people, who have never done anything reprehensible. Among them is Gopchik, a sixteen-year-old boy who was sentenced to 10 years in concentration camp for giving milk to Ukrainian nationalist rebels, and Aleshka the Baptist who received twenty-five years for his religious beliefs. The protagonist of the novel, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, is a simple man without any heroic qualities. He is a former carpenter who was sent off to the battlefield during the World War II. After being captured by the Germans, Ivan and five of his fellow soldiers were able to escape and return to the Soviet military base. However, three of them were killed instantly, mistaken for German soldiers while the fourth soldier died from wounds a couple of days later. Although Ivan Denisovich was not shot, he was arrested and accused of being a German spy. Even though he was innocent, he had to confess during the interrogation, because he understood that he would be shot immediately if he did not. As a result, he was sentenced to ten years in a Siberian concentration camp for betraying Soviet Union. The Soviet labour camps represented a small-scale totalitarian nation, where wardens were the despotic rulers who frequently abused the prisoners.
This point of the story is indirectly brought out in the very beginning when Ivan's colleagues, and supposedly his friends, learn of his death. The narrator states in paragraph 5:
...Russian society and social norms. The greatest reminder of this is found in the fact that Lopahkin, the man who Ranevsky once spoke to condescendingly, is now the family’s last hope for survival. Ironically enough, Lopahkin is often glancing at his watch, a reminder that time is changing, and a message that he, himself, is a testament to.