Solzhenitsyn One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich

In Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes in three volumes the Russian prison system known as the gulag. That work, like Kafka’s The Trial, presents a culture and society where there is no justice – in or out of court. Instead, there is a nameless, faceless, mysterious bureaucracy that imposes its will upon the people, coercing them to submit to the will of the state or face prison or death. In One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, we are presented with exactly what the titles tells us, one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. However, Ivan Denisovich spends his days in the gulag in Siberia, freezing and starving with the other prisoners while he serves the remainder of a ten year sentence. Ivan is not a hero or extraordinary. Instead, he is an ordinary example of the type of individual who spent their days in the gulag. What emerges from these ordinary individuals is the strength and will to survive and at the end of the day, a day that millions of others spent just like Ivan, still find the courage to conclude “Almost a happy day” (Solzhenitsyn 159). This analysis will focus on the historical significance of the event covered in this work, i.e., the daily life of an ordinary prisoner in a Siberian work camp in communist Russia. A conclusion will discuss how a novel provides the reader with a different viewpoint of history than that provided by the pundit or historian.

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historically significant aspects of the event of being a prisoner of the Russian state are revealed in the novella. For example, we see that none of the people who are in the camp have committed real crimes. Because of this their incarceration is of uncertain length. We see that though Ivan is aware of the envy of the others that his term is almost completed, he is not as full of confidence that the authorities will keep their word: Shukov rather enjoyed having everybody poke a finger at him as if to say: Look at him, his term’s nearly up. But he had his doubts about it. Those zeks who finished their time during the war had all been ‘retained pending special instructions’ and had been released only in ’46. Even those serving three-year sentences were kept for another five. The law can be stood on its head. When your ten years are up they can say, ‘Here’s another ten for you.’ Or exile you. (Solzhenitsyn 70) The state is the only source of justice and anyone disagreeing with it is oppressed by whatever means are necessary. The same charges have been proven true about the judicial system in the Soviet Union under communism. We see that Ivan assesses his situation in a positive manner. He knows he suffers undue hard
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Approximate Word count = 1943
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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