ere exacerbated to the point of concentration camp deprivation and abuse “There wouldn’t be a warm corner for a whole month. Not even a doghouse. And fires were out of the question. There was nothing to build them with. Let your work warm you up, that was your only salvation” (Solzhenitsyn 19). We are treated to one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, a former member of the army who is serving the ninth year of a ten year sentence because he has been convicted of being a spy for the Germans. Often called zek, a Russian word for prisoner, Ivan and the other men become numbers which is a criticism of how the Russian people are mere numbers to communist leaders.
When the day begins we see that Ivan wakes up just as he has countless times for nine years, to the freezing, harsh, conditions of the Siberian labor camp to which he has been assigned. The Siberian camp experience is one filled with cold, hunger, and hopelessness. Ivan’s day presented to us in detail is the authors attempt to portray the harsh conditions of this environment in some way to make us empathize with the character it took to endure such an environment on a daily basis for years. Ivan wakes up earlier than the others because he enjoys some free time before work begins. He performs various tasks from sewing mittens to collecting dishes to earn money. It is a cut-throat environment where bribery, squealers, and theft run amuck. Ivan disagrees with the wo
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