He does not lick bowls, he does not give or take bribes, and he is deferential when necessary, but he never crawls. Compromises are certainly necessary, but there is a vast moral gap between Ivan and Fetyukov: Fetyukov will do anything for a little more food, and he is properly referred to as a scavenging animal Ivan, in contrast, will swindle and bully, at times, but basically, he relies on his resourcefulness to achieve the same goal. It is better to establish a personal code of behavior which dictates what one will not do just to preserve one's physical existence.Įxistence without dignity is worthless - in fact, loss of human dignity will also diminish the will and the capacity to survive. However, it is wrong to concentrate on what one must do to survive. Like the authors of other prison novels, Solzhenitsyn concludes that it is the duty of a human being not to resign and give up the struggle for survival.
Solzhenitsyn, who has first-hand experience of the camp conditions which he describes in this story, relates the actual experiences of millions of his compatriots, and his Russian readers could not help but ponder the real possibility of their being confronted with Ivan Denisovich's situation. What must a man or a woman do to get out of such a camp alive? Is survival the only and most important goal, or are there limits to what a person can and should do to stay alive? Is religious faith necessary or vital for survival? All of these are questions which this work attempts to answer on a literal level. Like all of these works, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich deals with the struggle for survival under inhumane conditions. As such, it deals with many of the same problems that works like The Survivor by Terrence des Pres, Pierre Boulle's The Bridge on the River Kwai, Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Henri Charriere's Papillon, and many German, French, and British POW novels attempt to come to grips with. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is literally a prison story, and thus, it takes its place in a long list of similar works which deal with conditions in prisons, labor camps, concentration camps, mental hospitals, or POW camps. The reader has to transfer very few terms and concepts to a non-literal, symbolic or allegorical level. Expressed simply, on this level the author communicates with the reader in a "realistic," non-symbolic fashion. One of these is the literal level - that is, a level on which one requires only an understanding of the basic denotation of the terms and concepts employed by the author. Most worthwhile pieces of literature operate on multiple levels of meaning. Style and Narrative Perspective in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.Levels of Meaning in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Ivan Speculates about Faith and Astronomy.About One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
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