"One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, issues and other issues are discussed in this article.
The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story about how a man from the people relates himself to a forcibly imposed reality and its ideas. It shows in a condensed form that camp life, which will be described in detail in other, major works of Solzhenitsyn - in the novel “The Gulag Archipelago” and “In the First Circle”. The story itself was written while working on the novel “In the First Circle”, in 1959.
The work represents a complete opposition to the regime. This is a cell of a large organism, a terrible and unforgiving organism of a large state, so cruel to its inhabitants.
In the story there are special measures of space and time. Camp is a special time that is almost motionless. The days in the camp roll by, but the deadline does not. A day is a unit of measurement. The days are like two drops of water, all the same monotony, thoughtless mechanicalness. Solzhenitsyn tries to fit the entire camp life into one day, and therefore he uses the smallest details in order to recreate the entire picture of life in the camp. In this regard, they often talk about a high degree of detail in Solzhenitsyn’s works, and especially in short prose - stories. Behind each fact lies a whole layer of camp reality. Each moment of the story is perceived as a frame of a cinematic film, taken separately and examined in detail, under a magnifying glass. “At five o’clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks.” Ivan Denisovich overslept. I always got up when I woke up, but today I didn’t get up. He felt that he was sick. They take everyone out, line them up, everyone goes to the dining room. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov’s number is Sh-5ch. Everyone tries to be the first to enter the dining room: the thickest pour is poured first. After eating, they are lined up again and searched.
The abundance of details, as it seems at first glance, should burden the narrative. After all, there is almost no visual action in the story. But this, nevertheless, does not happen. The reader is not burdened by the narrative; on the contrary, his attention is riveted to the text, he intensely follows the course of events, real and occurring in the soul of one of the characters. Solzhenitsyn does not need to resort to any special techniques to achieve this effect. It's all about the material of the image itself. Heroes are not fictional characters, but real people. And these people are placed in conditions where they have to solve problems on which their lives and fate most directly depend. To a modern person, these tasks seem insignificant, and that is why the story leaves an even more eerie feeling. As V.V. Agenosov writes, “every little thing for the hero is literally a matter of life and death, a matter of survival or dying. Therefore, Shukhov (and with him every reader) sincerely rejoices at every particle found, every extra crumb of bread.”
There is one more time in the story - metaphysical, which is also present in other works of the writer. At this time there are other values. Here the center of the world is transferred to the consciousness of the prisoner.
In this regard, the topic of metaphysical understanding of a person in captivity is very important. Young Alyoshka teaches the no longer young Ivan Denisovich. By this time, all the Baptists were imprisoned, but not all the Orthodox. Solzhenitsyn introduces the topic of religious understanding of man. He is even grateful to prison for turning him towards spiritual life. But Solzhenitsyn more than once noticed that at this thought, millions of voices appeared in his mind, saying: “That’s why you say that because you survived.” These are the voices of those who laid down their lives in the Gulag, who did not live to see the moment of liberation, who did not see the sky without the ugly prison net. The bitterness of loss comes through in the story.
The category of time is also associated with individual words in the text of the story itself. For example, these are the first and last lines. At the very end of the story, he says that Ivan Denisovich’s day was a very successful day. But then he mournfully notes that “there were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his term from bell to bell.”
The space in the story is also interestingly presented. The reader does not know where the space of the camp begins and ends; it seems as if it has filled all of Russia. All those who found themselves behind the wall of the Gulag, somewhere far away, in an unattainable distant city, in a village.
The very space of the camp turns out to be hostile for prisoners. They are afraid of open areas and strive to cross them as quickly as possible, to hide from the eyes of the guards. Animal instincts awaken in a person. Such a description completely contradicts the canons of Russian classics of the 19th century. The heroes of that literature feel comfortable and at ease only in freedom; they love space and distance, which are associated with the breadth of their soul and character. Solzhenitsyn's heroes flee from space. They feel much safer in cramped cells, in stuffy barracks, where they can at least allow themselves to breathe more freely.
The main character of the story is a man from the people - Ivan Denisovich, a peasant, a front-line soldier. And this was done deliberately. Solzhenitsyn believed that it is people from the people who ultimately make history, move the country forward, and bear the guarantee of true morality. Through the fate of one person - Ivan Denisovich - the author shows the fate of millions who were innocently arrested and convicted. Shukhov lived in the village, which he remembers fondly here in the camp. At the front, he, like thousands of others, fought with full dedication, not sparing himself. After being wounded, he went back to the front. Then German captivity, from where he miraculously managed to escape. And this is why he is now in the camp. He was accused of espionage. And what exactly the task the Germans gave him, neither Ivan Denisovich himself nor the investigator knew: “What task - neither Shukhov himself, nor the investigator could come up with. So they just left it as a task.” At the time of the story, Shukhov had been in the camps for about eight years. But this is one of the few who did not lose their dignity in the grueling conditions of the camp. In many ways, his habits as a peasant, an honest worker, a peasant help him. He does not allow himself to humiliate himself in front of other people, lick plates, or inform on others. His age-old habit of respecting bread is visible even now: he stores bread in a clean rag, takes off his hat before eating. He knows the value of work, loves it, and is not lazy. He is sure: “he who knows two things with his hands can also handle ten.” In his hands the matter is resolved, the frost is forgotten. He treats his tools with care and carefully monitors the laying of the wall, even in this forced work. Ivan Denisovich's day is a day of hard work. Ivan Denisovich knew how to do carpentry and could work as a mechanic. Even in forced labor, he showed diligence and built a beautiful, even wall. And those who did not know how to do anything carried sand in wheelbarrows.
Solzhenitsyn's hero has largely become the subject of malicious accusations among critics. According to them, this integral national character should be almost ideal. Solzhenitsyn portrays an ordinary person. So, Ivan Denisovich professes camp wisdom and laws: “Groan and rot. But if you resist, you will break.” This was received negatively by critics. Particular bewilderment was caused by the actions of Ivan Denisovich when, for example, he took away a tray from a weak prisoner and deceived the cook. It is important to note here that he does this not for personal benefit, but for his entire team.
There is another phrase in the text that caused a wave of discontent and extreme surprise among critics: “I didn’t know whether he wanted it or not.” This thought was misinterpreted as Shukhov’s loss of firmness and inner core. However, this phrase echoes the idea that prison awakens spiritual life. Ivan Denisovich already has life values. Prison or freedom will not change them, he will not give it up. And there is no captivity, no prison that could enslave a soul, deprive it of freedom, self-expression, life.
Ivan Denisovich’s value system is especially visible when comparing him with other characters imbued with camp laws.
Thus, in the story Solzhenitsyn recreates the main features of that era when the people were doomed to incredible torment and hardship. The history of this phenomenon does not actually begin in 1937, when the so-called violations of the norms of state and party life began, but much earlier, from the very beginning of the existence of the totalitarian regime in Russia. Thus, the story presents a cluster of the fate of millions of Soviet people who were forced to pay for honest and devoted service through years of humiliation, torment, and camps.
Plan
Composition
Solzhenitsyn's major epic works are accompanied by seemingly compressed, condensed versions of them - stories and novellas. Compression of time and concentration of space is one of the basic laws in the artistic world of a writer. That is why his talent gravitates towards the genre of short stories and tales. However, this is a story of a special type: its content is not an episode from a person’s life, but the entire life of this person, seen “through the prism” of such an episode. We can say that this is a story that “remembers” its kinship with the epic.
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was written in 1959 in forty days - during a break between work on chapters of the novel “In the First Circle.” The life of a Russian peasant in a camp zone is the immediate reality with which the reader of the story becomes acquainted. However, the theme of the work is not limited to camp life. In “One Day...”, in addition to the details of a person’s “survival” in the zone, there are details of modern life in the village passed through the hero’s consciousness. Brigadier Tyurin's story contains evidence of the consequences of collectivization in the country. In the disputes of camp intellectuals there is a discussion of some phenomena of Soviet art (S. Eisenstein’s film “John the Terrible”, the theatrical premiere of Yu. Zavadsky). Many details of Soviet history are mentioned in connection with the fate of Shukhov’s fellow prisoners.
Thus, the main theme of the story, like all of Solzhenitsyn’s work, is the theme of the fate of Russia. The particular, local themes of the story are organically integrated into its general thematic “map”. The theme of the fate of art in a totalitarian state is indicative in this regard. Thus, camp artists “paint free paintings for the authorities, and in turn go to paint numbers for scams.” According to Solzhenitsyn, the art of the Soviet era became part of the apparatus of oppression. The motif of the degradation of art is also supported by an episode of Shukhov’s reflections on village artisans producing dyed “carpets”.
The plot of the story is chronicle. But although the plot of the story is based on the events of just one day, the memories of the main character allow us to imagine his pre-camp biography. Here is its outline: Ivan Shukhov was born in 1911 and spent the pre-war years in the village of Temgenevo. His family includes two daughters (his only son died early). Shukhov was in the war from its first days. Was injured. He was captured, from where he managed to escape. He was convicted in 1943 on a fabricated case for “treason.” At the time of the plot action, he served eight years (the story takes place on one of the January days of 1951 in a convict camp in Kazakhstan).
Character system. Although most of the characters in the story are depicted in laconic means, the writer managed to achieve plastic expressiveness in the images of Shukhov’s fellow prisoners. Here we see a wealth of human types, a variety of individualities. Sometimes a writer only needs one or two fragments, a few expressive sketches, for a particular character to remain in the reader’s memory for a long time. Solzhenitsyn is sensitive to the class, professional and national specifics of human characters. Even peripheral characters are depicted with that precisely calculated pressure that allows one to discern the essence of his character in a person’s appearance.
Let us quote two sketches that are contrasting in their overall tone. Here is the first: “Dark, long, and frowning - and rushes quickly. He emerges from the barracks: “What are they gathered here?” - You won’t get buried. At first he also carried a whip, like a hand up to the elbow, leather, twisted. In the BUR she was flogged, they say” (chief of the regime, Lieutenant Volkova). Second: “Of all the hunched backs of the camp, his back was extremely straight, and at the table it seemed as if he had put something under himself beyond the bench. ... He had no teeth either above or below: his ossified gums chewed bread by his teeth. His face was all exhausted, but not to the weakness of a disabled wick, but to a hewn, dark stone” (old prisoner Yu-81, about whom Shukhov knows “that he has been in camps and prisons countless times, how much Soviet power is worth”) .
The system of images of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” reflects the compositional skill of the writer. The relationships between the characters are subject to the strictest camp hierarchy. There is an impassable gulf between the prisoners and the camp administration. Noteworthy is the absence in the story of the names and sometimes surnames of numerous overseers and guards (their individuality is manifested only in the degree of ferocity and forms of violence against prisoners). On the contrary, despite the depersonalizing system of numbers assigned to camp inmates, many of them are present in the hero’s mind with their names and sometimes patronymics. This evidence of preserved individuality does not extend to so-called wicks, idiots and snitches. In fact, Solzhenitsyn shows, the system is trying in vain to turn living people into mechanical parts of a totalitarian machine. In this regard, especially important in the story, in addition to the main character, are the images of the brigadier Tyurin, his assistant Pavlo, the captain Buinovsky, the Latvian Kilgas and the Baptist Alyoshka.
Solzhenitsyn made the main character a Russian peasant, an “ordinary” peasant. Although the circumstances of camp life are obviously “exceptional”, out of the ordinary, the writer deliberately emphasizes “normality” in his hero, the outward inconspicuousness of behavior. According to the writer, which is somewhat consonant with Tolstoy’s views, the fate of the country depends on the natural resilience and innate morality of the common man. The main thing in Shukhov is his indestructible inner dignity. Even while serving his more educated fellow prisoners, Ivan Denisovich does not change his age-old peasant habits and “does not let himself down.”
Shukhov's national character lies in his inability and unwillingness to complain about hardships, in his ability to “settle in” even in a deliberately unfavorable environment. In characterizing Ivan Denisovich, the details of his working skills are very important: how Shukhov managed to acquire his own convenient trowel; and how he hoards pieces of aluminum wire to later cast into spoons; and a mention of a folding knife, which was sharpened and skillfully hidden by Shukhov. Further, at first glance, insignificant details of the hero’s existence, his everyday habits, a kind of peasant etiquette and demeanor - all this receives, in the context of the story, the meaning of values that allow the human element to be preserved in a person. So, for example, Shukhov always wakes up an hour and a half before the divorce. It is in these morning minutes that he belongs to himself. These moments of actual freedom are important to the hero both because “you can always earn extra money,” and because they allow him to be himself, to survive as an individual.
Categories of time and space in the story. Features of subject detail. Solzhenitsyn's prose has the quality of special persuasiveness in conveying life phenomena - what is commonly called the plasticity of the figurative structure. The story told by the writer about one day in the life of a prisoner was perceived by the first readers of “Ivan Denisovich” as documentary, uninvented. Indeed, the images of most of the characters in the story are created on the basis of real prototypes - authentic characters taken from life. According to the writer himself, these are, for example, the images of Brigadier Tyurin, Cavtorang Buinovsky, and many other prisoners and guards. But the main character of the story, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, according to the author, is a composite image: he is composed of portrait signs and details of the biography of an artillery soldier of the battery that the future author of the story commanded at the front, but his camp specialty, the structure of feelings and thoughts are transferred to him from prisoner No. 854 - A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
The descriptive fragments of the story are filled with signs of uninvented reality. It seems that they were transferred here from life directly, “without processing.” These are the portrait characteristics of Shukhov himself (shaved, toothless and seemingly shrunken head; his manner of movement; a crooked spoon, which he carefully hides behind the top of his felt boots, etc.); a clearly drawn plan of the area with a watch, medical unit, barracks; psychologically convincing description of a prisoner's feelings during a search. Every detail of the behavior of the prisoners or their camp life is conveyed almost physiologically specifically. Does this mean that the writer merely faithfully reproduced pictures of real life here?
A careful reading of the story reveals that the effect of life-like persuasiveness and psychological authenticity is the result not only of the writer’s conscious desire for maximum accuracy, but also a consequence of his extraordinary compositional skill. A successful formulation about Solzhenitsyn’s artistic style belongs to literary critic Arkady Belinkov: “Solzhenitsyn spoke in the voice of great literature, in the categories of good and evil, life and death, power and society... He spoke about one day, one incident, one yard... Day, the courtyard and the case of Solzhenitsyn are synecdoches of good and evil, life and death, the relationship between man and society.” This statement by the literary critic accurately notes the relationship between the formal-compositional categories of time, space and plot with the nerve nodes of Solzhenitsyn’s problematics.
One day in the writer’s story contains a cluster of a person’s fate, a kind of squeeze out of his life. It is impossible not to pay attention to the extremely high degree of detail in the narrative: each fact is divided into the smallest components, most of which are presented in close-up. Solzhenitsyn loves “cinematic” compositional techniques (in the epic “The Red Wheel,” for example, he introduced the concept of “screen” as a compositional unit of the text). The author is unusually carefully and scrupulously watching how his hero dresses before leaving the barracks, how he puts on a muzzle, or how he eats a small fish caught in the soup to the skeleton. Even such a seemingly insignificant “gastronomic” detail, like fish eyes floating in a stew, is awarded a separate “frame” in the course of the story.
Such meticulousness of the image should make the narrative heavier and slow it down, but this does not happen. The reader's attention not only does not get tired, but is even more sharpened, and the rhythm of the narrative does not become monotonous. The fact is that Solzhenitsyn’s Shukhov is placed in a situation between life and death: the reader is infected with the energy of the writer’s attention to the circumstances of this extreme situation. Every little thing for the hero is literally a matter of life and death, a matter of survival or dying. Therefore, Shukhov (and with him the reader) sincerely rejoices at every little thing he finds, every extra crumb of bread.
In addition, the monotony of careful descriptions is skillfully overcome by the writer through his use of expressive syntax: Solzhenitsyn avoids extended periods, filling the text with rapid chopped phrases, syntactic repetitions, emotionally charged exclamations and questions. Any detail of the description, any look or assessment, fear or relief - everything is conveyed through the perception of the hero himself. That is why there is nothing neutral, purely descriptive in the descriptive fragments: everything forces one to remember the emergency of the situation and the dangers that await the hero every minute.
The day is the “nodal” point through which all human life passes in Solzhenitsyn’s story. That is why chronological and chronometric designations in the text are saturated with symbolic meanings. This is, for example, one of the production scenes at the construction of a thermal power plant: Shukhov determines the time of noon by the sun, but captain Buinovsky corrects him, mentioning the decree adopted by the Soviet government on this matter. We are talking about a decree of the Soviet government in 1930, according to which maternity time was introduced: one hour was added to the standard time of a particular area. The purpose of the innovation is a more rational use of daylight hours. In the text, however, this fact is correlated with the important motive of the unnaturalness of the entire camp practice and, more broadly, of the entire Soviet system. Violence against life turns out to be all-encompassing, which is why the hero asks the question: “Does the sun really obey their decrees?”
Outwardly neutral chronological “marks” mentioned in a conversation about a particular character are one of the ways of demonstrating the author’s position. It is important for Solzhenitsyn to “unnoticeably” inform the reader when Shukhov’s first foreman Kuzemin and his current foreman Tyurin were arrested and began camp life. This is, respectively, 1931 (by 1943, Kuzemin had been in prison for twelve years) and 1932 (by January 1951, Tyurin had already been in the zone for nineteen years). The author counts the era of totalitarianism not from 1937, but from the first years of Soviet power. In this regard, Solzhenitsyn’s position was unusually bold against the backdrop of the “thaw” sixties: unlike critics of the “cult of personality,” the writer was able to tell the whole truth about the Soviet era.
It is especially important that in the text the concepts “day” and “life” come close to each other, sometimes almost becoming synonymous. This semantic convergence is carried out through the universal concept of “deadline” in the story. A term is both the punishment meted out to a prisoner, and the internal routine of prison life, and - most importantly - a synonym for human fate and a reminder of the most important, last term of human life. Thus, temporary designations acquire a deep moral and psychological coloring in the story.
The importance of the category of time in the story is reflected in the fact that its first and last phrases are dedicated specifically to time. The movement of the clock hand itself is an important factor in the movement of the plot (pay attention to the frequency of references to time in the text). The eventual and subject material in the story is composed as if using a metronome.
The location of the action is also unusually significant. The space of the camp is hostile to prisoners, the open areas of the zone are especially dangerous: every prisoner is in a hurry to run across the areas between rooms as quickly as possible, he is afraid of being caught in such a place, and is in a hurry to duck into the shelter of the barracks. In contrast to the heroes of Russian literature, who traditionally love vastness, distance, and unconstrained space, Shukhov and his fellow prisoners dream of the saving closeness of shelter. Barrack turns out to be a home for them, the author shows with hidden irony. The space in the story is built in concentric circles: first the barracks are described, then the zone is outlined, then a transition across the steppe and a construction site are drawn, after which the space is again compressed to the size of the barracks.
The closure of the circle in the artistic topography of the story receives symbolic meaning. The prisoner's view is limited by a circle surrounded by wire. The prisoners are fenced off even from the sky: the spatial vertical is sharply narrowed. From above they are constantly blinded by spotlights, hanging so low that they seem to deprive people of air. For them there is no horizon, no sky, no normal circle of life. But there is also the prisoner’s inner vision - the space of his memory; and in it closed circles are overcome and images of the village, Russia, and the world arise.
Features of the narrative. By recreating the image of a simple Russian person, Solzhenitsyn achieves an almost complete fusion of the author's voice and the speech of the hero. From a compositional point of view, it is interesting that the entire story is structured as an improperly direct speech by Ivan Denisovich. that the whole story is structured as the improperly direct speech of Ivan Denisovich. When talking about camp life, the writer could have chosen a different narrative style. It could be an epic “from the author” narrative, or - the opposite option - a first-person story, entirely focused on the point of view of the hero. Solzhenitsyn preferred a form of narration that made it possible to bring the peasant’s point of view as close as possible to the point of view of the author. This artistic effect is best achieved by using improperly direct speech: it tells not only what the hero of the work himself could put into words, but also things that are hardly accessible to his understanding. At the same time, the very manner of speech expression is determined by the vernacular and dialecticisms inherent in skaz speech, as well as by the moderate use of camp jargon (camp jargon in the character’s improperly direct speech is used minimally - only 16 camp concepts are used).
Solzhenitsyn rather sparingly uses figurative meanings of words in the story, preferring the original imagery and achieving the maximum effect of “naked” speech. At the same time, in the speech structure of the work, the role of proverbs, sayings, folk beliefs and apt figurative statements is great. Thanks to them, the main character is able to extremely concisely and accurately define the essence of an event or human character in two or three words. An example of this kind is the proverb used in relation to one of the camp inmates: “The fast louse is always the first to hit the comb.” Speaking about the constant debilitating feeling of hunger in the camp, Shukhov recalls another saying: “The belly is a villain, it does not remember the old good...”.
On the other hand, a number of proverbs and folk beliefs recalled by the hero characterize the peasant mindset of his worldview. This is what, according to Ivan Denisovich, happens in the sky with the old month when it disappears, being replaced by a new one: “God crumbles the old month into stars.” The hero’s speech sounds especially aphoristic at the end of episodes or descriptive fragments.
Solzhenitsyn showed one, as his hero considers in the finale of the story, a successful day: “they weren’t put in a punishment cell, the brigade wasn’t sent out to Sotsgorodok, at lunch he made porridge, the foreman closed the interest well, Shukhov laid the wall cheerfully, he didn’t get caught with a hacksaw on the search, I worked at Caesar's in the evening and bought some tobacco. And he didn’t get sick, he got over it. The day passed, unclouded, almost happy.”
The author’s final words sound just as epically calm:
“There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his term from bell to bell.
Because of leap years, three extra days were added.”
The writer refrains from loud words and frank displays of emotions: it is enough that the corresponding feelings arise in the reader. And this is guaranteed by the entire harmonious structure of the story about the power of life and the power of man.
Studying writers and their work at school, we understand that many of them did not want and could not remain silent about the ongoing events of the time in which they lived. Everyone tried to convey to readers the truth and their vision of reality. They wanted us to be able to learn all aspects of life in their time, and draw the right conclusions for ourselves. One of these writers who expressed his position as a citizen, despite the totalitarian regime, was Solzhenitsyn. The writer was not silent when creating his works. Among them is Solzhenitsyn’s story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which we will briefly review below.
Analyzing the author's work, we see different problems raised. These are political and social issues, ethical and philosophical problems, and most importantly, in this work the author raises the forbidden topic of the camps, where millions were sent, and where they eked out their existence while serving their sentence.
This is how the main character Shukhov Ivan Denisovich ended up in the camp. At one time, while fighting for his homeland, he was captured by the Germans, and when he escaped, he fell into the hands of his own. Now he has to live in prison, serving his sentence at hard labor, since the hero is accused of treason. The ten-year sentence in the camp drags on slowly and monotonously. But to understand the everyday life of prisoners, where they are left to themselves only during sleep, breakfast, lunch and dinner, it is enough to consider only one day from early morning to late evening. One day is enough to get acquainted with the laws and procedures established in the camp.
The story One Day by Ivan Denisovich is a short work written in clear, simple language, without metaphors or comparisons. The story is written in the language of a simple prisoner, so we can encounter criminal words used by prisoners. The author in his work introduces readers to the fate of a prisoner of the Stalinist camp. But, describing one day of a specific person, the author tells us about the fate of the Russian people who became victims of Stalin’s terror.
Solzhenitsyn's work One Day in Ivan Denisovich introduces us to different characters. Among them, the main character is a simple peasant, a soldier who was captured and later escaped to end up in a camp. This was reason enough to accuse him of treason. Ivan Denisovich is a kind, hardworking, calm and resilient person. Other characters are also described in the story. They all behave with dignity, they all, like the behavior of the main character, can be admired. This is how we meet Gopchik, Alyoshka the Baptist, foreman Tyurin, Buinovsky, and film director Caesar Markovich. However, there are also characters who are difficult to admire. The main character also condemns them. These are people like Panteleev, who are in the camp in order to snitch on someone.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn is an outstanding Russian writer, public figure, publicist, one of the few who, under the totalitarian regime of the CPSU, was able not to remain silent, but to actively express his civic position.
Solzhenitsyn's works touch on acute social and political issues; they are full of objective condemnations of the policies of the USSR authorities and communist ideology in general. Solzhenitsyn’s work resembles a crystal, which displays the whole bitter truth of the history of our people.
At the beginning of his writing career, Solzhenitsyn touched on the themes of the First World War and revolution. During his participation in the Great Patriotic War, Solzhenitsyn actively condemned the personality of Stalin, and in personal correspondence with his friend he compared the communist regime with serfdom. The consequence of this was the writer’s ten-year exile.
In exile, Alexander Isaevich strengthens his anti-communist principles even more. After the publication of the book “The Gulag Archipelago” in 1974, about forced labor in the labor camps of the Soviet Union, the writer was forced to emigrate from the country. Twenty years later, in 1994, the writer had the opportunity to return to his homeland. Many of Solzhenitsyn’s works are based on reliable facts, on the writer’s own memories of his camp life.
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story about the life of an ordinary person in a camp zone. The work covers not only the theme of camp life, but also many social problems provoked by the communist regime. Thus, in the story of Brigadier Tyurin, the consequences of collectivization in the Russian village are mentioned. Prisoners discuss the degradation of art caused by the intervention of communist ideology
The plot is based on the story of Shukhov Ivan Denisovich, a camp prisoner who remembers his life before his arrest.
The image of Ivan Denisovich is a collective image of all Russian prisoners who, on false or imaginary charges, shared with Solzhenitsyn the bitter fate of political repression. From the first days, Shukhov heroically fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.
He was captured, from which he managed to escape. Like many people who escaped from captivity, Ivan Denisovich was accused of treason and imprisoned in hard labor camps. The work contains a fairly wide range of characters. The author highlights the individuality of each of them: these were people of multifaceted individuality, who were united by one unbearable present of camp life.
Despite the rather condensed form of the work, the author was able to show, using the example of one individual individual, the fate of the entire Russian people, who became victims of Stalin's terror.
Solzhenitsyn wrote a huge number of different works. And one of them is written about Stalin’s repressions and is called “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” In addition, from this story you can understand how those people who did not want to please and obey the authorities actually lived. But life was very difficult for them at that time. The work begins by telling the whole camp life of the people. In addition, he wants to show readers all the cruelty and injustice of those people who turned out to be traitors to their homeland. At this time, any person could turn out to be a traitor.
One prisoner went to prison, but when the war began, he went to defend his homeland, but after the war he again turned out to be a traitor and was sent into captivity. But one day he managed to escape from prison. And he could have lived calmly and easily, but since Shukhov was a fair man, he immediately admitted it and was punished and sent to a camp.
But here no one is safe from what can happen in this camp. For every disobedience you could end up in a punishment cell. But here the conditions were simply disgusting and very different from the conditions of an ordinary cell. In addition, every criminal had to work and these jobs were difficult and difficult, and sometimes even deaths occurred during this work. Barbed wire was strung throughout the prison so that not a single criminal could escape from here.
Sometimes in such conditions it is difficult to lose human dignity and remain human until the end of your days. You need to be not only honest, but also fair, as well as accept the situation in time and find the right way to solve it. In addition, if you behave correctly and have the right attitude, you can not only be able to live in the most difficult conditions, but also make friends with the right people who will help with everything and support you in a difficult situation and help out if necessary.
So our main character Shukhov is trying to accept the conditions in which he finds himself, and also learn to live in them. In addition, he tries to make sure that his face is not damaged. He had to spend eight years here, and not every person can withstand this. He learned all the rules and laws of the prison and even learned to follow them and not break them.
This work became the first narrative addressed to the mass reader, telling about Stalin's repressions. The story revealed to the general reader and, above all, representatives of the new generation of intellectuals, the hard-hitting truth about what millions had to endure.
In his story, Solozhenitsyn set himself the goal of avoiding unnecessary emotions. He did not strive, unlike writers of an earlier period, to demonstrate the suffering, mental and physical torment that befalls the hero, in order to arouse the reader's sympathy for him. On the contrary, the author’s goal was to show that everyday life itself can be very scary. The title "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" speaks in favor of this. The hero of the story has a name that has become a household name for Russians - Ivan. The expression “one day” should also orient the reader to the fact that this is an unremarkable day, a period of time for a prisoner during which nothing significant happened to him.
By this, the writer sought to once again remind the reader, or rather, give him the opportunity to once again draw the conclusion that anyone could be in Ivan Denisovich’s place.
The work emphasizes that the day described was not bad. Indeed, the hero was able to get an extra portion of gruel and had no trouble from the administration. To a person living in freedom, even with great restrictions on political rights, accompanied by petty control by his superiors, and also constantly experiencing shortages of various kinds of goods, such a day must have seemed terrible. Actually, this is what the writer sought, describing in detail the life of the camp.
Another goal of describing everyday life in captivity was Solzhenitsyn’s desire to bring the reader closer to his hero. The author tried to ensure that those who finished reading his story would be imbued with the feelings and emotions of the character as much as possible.
Considering the author’s further creativity and active rejection of Soviet power, it can be assumed that another of the tasks of the work was anti-Soviet propaganda. Feeling the hero’s helplessness before the camp authorities, including even such insignificant figures as the cook or the barracks supervisor (the same prisoner), the reader should have formed associations with his own life. The life of an ordinary Soviet person was also under constant control, which had nothing to oppose. Solzhenitsyn led to the conclusion that freedom in the Soviet Union is certainly more comfortable and satisfying, but the position of an ordinary person, in principle, differs little from that in which a prisoner is placed.
At the same time, the author also talks about human dignity. His Ivan Denisovich did not take the path of pleasing the administration for small handouts. At the same time, he did not become embittered, did not follow the path of the most seasoned criminals, devouring the weak.
Solzhenitsyn tried to convey to readers the idea that it is possible to survive in conditions of unfreedom (both camps and a totalitarian state), but it is impossible to live like that.
Such a famous Russian author as Solzhenitsyn wrote many different works. One of them covers the terrible and bloody time of Stalin’s repressions and is called “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” This story also tells about the lives of ordinary people who did not want to put up with that government and many, unfortunately, were subjected to repression. Life in those days was incredibly difficult. The work began with the author describing how people live in the camps. In addition, the author very clearly and contrastingly showed the reader the harshness and injustice of those who allegedly turned out to be traitors to the motherland. In those days, anyone could be targeted by the government.
So one person went to prison, however, when the war began, he was sent to the front to defend his homeland. However, after the war, he was again sent into captivity. One day he was lucky enough to escape from that terrible place. He could have started a calm, new life, but Shukhov was a fair man and confessed to everything. Naturally he was punished and sent back to the camp.
One thing was clear: no one was immune from what could happen in the camp. Any of the prisoners could be sent to a punishment cell only for allegedly behaving unsatisfactorily. Conditions, of course, in the crankcase were terrible, much worse than in a regular chamber. All the criminals did not just sit in their cells, but did not work as hard as they could. The work was so difficult that many died here. It was almost impossible to escape from there, because barbed wire was strung throughout the entire camp.
In such spartan conditions it is very difficult to maintain a positive attitude and at least remain human for the rest of your life. Here you need to be honest and fair, quickly find a way out of any situation and make decisions. If you behave well and help, then there is a great opportunity to make friends with the right people who, in due time, can help you survive in these unbearable conditions, in some places they will help, and in others they will simply support you. In any case, no matter what happens, you must always remain human.
The main character of the work, Shukhov, courageously accepts the harsh conditions in which he finds himself again. He's trying to learn to survive here. In addition, he is trying in every possible way to ensure that his face does not get damaged. He spent 8 years of his life here, and this is quite a long period of time, which not everyone could withstand. He learned to live by prison laws, not to break them, and remained human.
Autumn is a wonderful time. It gives us an unforgettable feeling of freshness, coolness and reminds us of the passing warm days. The sun is still warm, but in a childish way. Trees dress up in colorful, bright costumes
The last obscurantist has ever heard the name “Chichikov.” It is not surprising, since the hero with such a surname is the center of one of the fundamental works of Russian literature, “Dead Souls.”
Nabokov writes that Luzhin is a brilliant chess player, a person completely passionate about his work, who in the outside world sees only chess patterns and in fact lives only by chess.
