Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s classic novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a short novel about a prisoner trying to survive a Soviet labor camp, known as the Gulag. Socialist realism was the style of literature that was widely spread throughout Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. Therefore, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich consists mainly of socialist realist literature intended to function as Communist propaganda, through optimistic and positive portrayals of workers’ satisfaction on collective farms and in government factories. Although Joseph Stalin seems to romanticize the notion of work to his followers — even attempting to praise and glorify them for it — the reality is that Stalin and the Soviet Union manipulate workers’ concept

Although the character was fictional, but there were millions of innocent citizens like him. The author himself, Solzhenitsyn, had been sent to the Gulag in Joseph Stalin’s wave of terror. Solzhenitsyn perceives the Soviet Union as an illogical and ludicrous system, and he uses the protagonist as an example of a man trapped in this confusing, contemporary world. The main character’s experience exemplifies the iniquitous nature of the Soviet legal system. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an example of a literary piece with a hidden meaning that breaks political restrictions and roused people against the Soviet

In the Stakhanovite spirit, Shukhov has a friendly race with Kilgas as they each strive to build more of their own wall. Shukhov takes pride in his work: “Shukhov made no mistakes. The blocks varied. If any had chipped corners or broken edges or lumps on their sides, he noticed it at once and saw which way up to lay them and where they would fit best on the wall”. Both workers are satisfied with the tasks and duties they have been assigned. He and the other bricklayers are lost in the enjoyment of their labor:

Shukhov and the other masons felt the cold no longer. Thanks to the urgent work, the first wave of heat had come over them – when you feel wet under your coat, under your jacket, under your shirt and your vest. But they didn’t stop for a moment; they hurried on with the laying. And after about an hour they had their second flush of heat, the one that dries up the sweat. Their feet didn’t feel the cold that was the main thing. Nothing else mattered. Even the breeze, light but piercing, couldn’t distract them from