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Stimulus to a Searching, Introspective Analysis Apr 11, 2001 (82 of 86 found this helpful)
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is indeed a powerful book. Were it merely the grim testimonial to life in the Soviet Gulags or a witness to infringed liberties, its force would be staggering. Were it a testimony to the indomitableness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, save Anne Franke`s diary and the testemony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done.
However, it is more than all the above. "One Day" is actually a searching look at human nature. The biting wind, jagged wire, frigid climate, watery soup, and the warmth provided by an extra pair of mittens or an hour of hard physical labor all find matches in the colorful crowd of characters that parades through this narrative - from the prison guards to the prisoners themselves to the prison director to the turncoat prisoners who sold their integrity for the favor of their oppressors.
This is a book to be read, first of all, for its historical value - a tribute to those who were imprisoned but whose voices were never heard, and a silent plea to commit all our forces to the proposition that such vileness will never reach our liberty-loving shores. No less importantly, this is a book that should prompt us to turn our eyes inward and question ourselves whether, in our own way, we are capable of committing the same atrocities against our fellow man, and whether, if subjected to the same suffering, we would have the strength of character to find as much comfort in a bowl of soup as we do now in the transient, unfounded knowledge that such inhumanity will not touch us.
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Life in a gulag, on one fine day Mar 10, 2001 (42 of 49 found this helpful)
I read this book on the recommendation of a friend, who said he literally shivered through the entire book. So did I.
This is Solzhenitsyn's tribute to the millions of people lost inside the Gulag Archipelago. Unlike the mammoth Archipelago, which documents the evil prison camp system of the Soviets, this is an intimate story of just one man, Ivan Denisovitch, who is sent to the impossibly harsh camp because he returned as a prisoner-of-war and was thus by definition, a traitor.
The book takes place over one day in Ivan's life in the Gulag. He schemes for an extra ration of bread, he survives an inspection, he grasps the crumbs of existence that literally are the difference between life and death. At the end of this day, you feel as cold as the sub-zero Siberian air. This book is utterly brilliant and, though depressing, heroic. Ivan never sacrifices his humanity for a moment.
There was an actual biography (now out of print) by Victor Herman called Coming out of the Ice. He was an American caught in the Stalin purges and imprisoned in a Siberian gulag. He survived the deadly games of partial cannabalism and lived on rats he trapped. He eventually got out and was able to document his experience. It compares exactly to Ivan Denisovitch. (By the way, where did the gulags go after the fall of the USSR?)
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Life in a labor camp Feb 19, 2002 (14 of 14 found this helpful)
The entirety of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's short novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" takes place on a winter day in 1951 in a Siberian labor camp. The title character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, has been a prisoner there for the past eight years and has two more to go, provided his sentence isn't extended even longer for no reason at all. As a Soviet soldier in World War II, he was imprisoned after being accused of spying for the Germans, but the novel is concerned more with his daily routine at the camp than with the politics behind his imprisonment.
Like anybody who's been in a highly structured and disciplined environment for a long time, Shukhov has developed his own individualized way of living day to day, bending the rules, avoiding punishment, and making life a little more bearable under the circumstances. Temperatures are commonly well below zero and the food is barely nutritional enough to keep the prisoners alive, but Shukhov has adapted well enough to know how to stay warm and make the most out of his meals. On this particular day, Shukhov's squad is forced to work construction; the novel describes how well Shukhov has honed his masonry skills as he expertly lays blocks and mortar building a wall for a building that will be used to hold future prisoners. Life at the camp has made him tough and independent; his only weakness is tobacco, for which he will beg, borrow, or steal.
The novel is based on Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a labor camp prisoner under Stalin's reign, and therefore it has a sincere, natural, brutal quality that not even someone like Orwell could imitate. More than anything, though, it portrays a man whose spirit is strong enough to triumph over the most extreme adversity. Case in point: There is another prisoner named Fetiukov, a sniveling weasel who cries about his harsh treatment. Shukhov observes that Fetuikov won't survive his imprisonment because he has the wrong attitude, which is why he can't help but feel a little sorry for the guy. This work is not only an indictment of the machinations of one of the twentieth century's most oppressive political systems; it also succeeds as a concise study in humanism.
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Powerful Jul 18, 2001 (9 of 9 found this helpful)
Stalin held the Soviet Union in a grip of terror from 1941 until he died (or, some are now saying, was murdered) in 1953. Among the atrocities that were always suspected were the existence of brutal Siberian prisons. In 1963, Alexander Solzhenitzyn's novel, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH, was published in America and around the world, revealing the realities of these experiences.
As much as the book makes an important statement of the political and social conditions of the era, it is also a wonderful work of literature. In a direct, spare style, the author goes through the minutiae of daily life from the perspective of one man, the title character who is mostly called Shukhov in the book. Like the other prisoners, Shukhov is not in for crime as we define it in America; his crime was to have been unlucky enough during World War II to be taken as a POW. Another prisoner's crime was to have received a small token of appreciation after the war from a British soldier. The brutalities they experience in their prison are not those commonly associated with contemporary American incarceration. Insufficient clothing, insufficient food and insufficient bedding in a remote arctic setting are just the beginning. They have nothing else. Work on building a "community" is only called off if the temperature goes lower than 42 degrees below zero. The men are given insufficient tools and supplies but are expected under threat to complete the building process in record time. On the one hand, the author writes, your worst enemy is the man next to you because you are both scrambling for the same meager scraps. At the same time, though, the dynamics of the system require that you give your allegiance to the gang. Many of the boss jobs are given to prisoners which yields another revelation about Stalin's world: the wall between prisoner and paid staff was very thin. Another: in the brief flashbacks of life outside the prison, there are struggles and inadequacies as well, no one has it easy. And another: the prisoners have one advantage that no one else in the USSR has, the freedom to communicate candidly without threat; what else can be done to those already living the life of punishment? At the end of the day, Shukhov is thrilled: he has caged a few extra scraps of food during the day and did nothing that would cause him to be thrown into solitary confinement of which he is most afraid.
My chief test of fiction is, does the author create an airtight world, using it to explicate universal truths of the human condition? ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH succeeds brilliantly. It is very readable, much like THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, and while it profiles a terrible life, it also emits a spirituality that arises from the specter of men who find something to be grateful for at the end of the day, even if it is an extra crust of stale bread or the fact that in the last 24 hours, they did nothing, however innocently, however not their own fault, that would get them sent to solitary confinement.
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A novel that sneaks up on you May 25, 2004 (8 of 8 found this helpful)
This is an interesting little book regarded by many as a classic. It gives a picture of a single day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a prisoner in a Russian labour camp under Stalin. As I read this book I found myself thinking, "Sure this is good. It's well written and interesting, but so far it's not powerful or impactful." However this is a book that kind of sneaks up on you and hits you with it's powerful impact right at the end. It's almost like you need to see the whole picture of the day to realise the profound theme which runs through all the little things that happen. You read through the whole day waiting for a climax which never comes. And then at the end of the day you are compelled to look back and realise the focus on the simple things - the joy to be had in work, the value of a crust of bread, a bowl of soup, a good pair of shoes, a favour done for a friend, and a favour received, the value in having one's freedom, even when living in a prison camp, the thankfulness of not becoming sick. It really makes one appreciative of what we have.
"A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day."