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”
After the assassination of Alexander the Great in 1881 by Russian socialist revolutionaries, Alexander III ascended to the throne and began to develop a reactionary policy that would be used to suppress the power of anti-tsarist rivals (Kort 23). In the late 1800s, Tsar Alexander III was faced with growing insurrection from the populist peasants, who were demanding more freedoms and land under the Tsarist regime. However, he was unwilling to give up his traditional centralized authority for a more democratic system of ruling. Instead, he sought political guidance from his advisor, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, an Orthodox religious conservative and loyal member of the Russian autocracy. Pobedonostsev was quick to hound revolutionaries by means
The prisoners are treated inhumanely. Solzhenitsyn emphasizes this dehumanization by constantly comparing the prisoners to animals. For example, when trying to line the prisoners up, one of the guards shouts that they are “just like a bunch of sheep” (28). At one point, the author compares the prisoners to Shukhov’s old horse who worked himself to death (86). Even during meals, the prisoners are forced to scavenge and fight over scraps of food like animals.
Another theme is dignity. The Gulag prison is meant to break the prisoners not make them stronger they were put in there for things ( not right things) by Stalin. The group is able to show some dignity in the ways Shuklov takes his hat to go and eat “he could never bring himself to eat with his hat on”.(pg 16) Shukhov Works hard to be able to show some pride even despite the constant rude slurs the guard say such as a couple of incidence was on page 12 when he was cleaning the guard decided to go tell him close the door you peice of scum, or when they insulted his wife he was only
Who could possibly be able to imagine the utter hopelessness and misery that a soviet prisoner experienced during Stalinism. Thousands of innocent men were taken from their families, homes, and lives, stripped of their dignity and banished to the harsh labor camps where they were to spend the rest of the days scraping out an existence and living day to day. This is exactly what Alexander Solzhenitsyn tries to express in his masterpiece work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Solzhenitsyn gives the reader a glimpse into the life of every man who ever experienced this hardship and shares the small acts of thriving humanity that are sparingly, but unendingly passed through their dreary lives and offer a bit of comfort to help them get through a single hour, a day, or even just a meal time. Solzhenitsyn uses One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to portray the endurance of humanity through out terrible hardships and shows the strength of the human spirit.
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...
The short story, “Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt”, explicates the life of a man named Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka. We see him briefly in his young years, followed by his life in the army, and his return to the farm where his strong characterized aunt resides. We can see immediately that this man lives in constant cleanliness and dutiful paranoia; these are some of his desires that he wishes to exhibit to others. We can also see his fears, which reside in the confiscation of his masculinity and independence. This short story has many elements that resemble others in the Nikolai Gogol collection.
The Art of the Chekhovian Language escapes from the personal intentions. Reality is neither embellished nor blackened, altered or "signified" through a restrictive conceptual vision.
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.
Political prisoners and criminals alike were subject to brutal conditions in the Soviet gulags at Kolyma in the 20th century. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the stories of many different prisoners are told and much is revealed about how humans react under these pressures, both naturally and socially. Being in an extreme environment not only takes a toll on one’s physical well-being, but on one’s mental and emotional state as well. The stories show that humans can be reduced to a fragile, animalistic state while in the Kolyma work camps because the extreme conditions force many men to focus solely on self-preservation.
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.
"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. .
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,
...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.
xvi Solzhenitsyn, A. I. The Gulag Archipelago, (I-II). Translated by Thomas P. Whitney. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1973, 436.
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