Preview

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Analytical Essay

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1439 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Analytical Essay
Russia, has a lowest ever temperature of –44ºC, and an average of 104 days a year above 0ºC and a yearly average of 261 days below 0 ºC. It is the second coldest continent in the world only behind Antarctica, it snows on average 111 days of the year. It is dark, gloomy, freezing and miserable in the winter, and in the summer, cold, dark, and gloomy. Camps for political prisoners seemed even colder, especially with no real heating and limited clothes to wear on these wintriness days.
<br>
<br>The camp which was the bases of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich was initiated by Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 until 1956. Stalin, which means "man of steel", constructed one of the tightest and toughest communisms in history. He is such a dominant figure in Russian history, even though he will always be remembered to heavily contributing to bringing Russia down.
<br>
<br>This was no general camp, but a so called "special" camp for long term prisoners. Shukhov was a political prisoner, in fact not one of these prisoners were common criminals. Stalin had established many camps like this, full of spies, prisoners of war, and those who rebelled against his system of government. The camps were in poor condition, the government spent as little on them as possible, all the repairs and erections of new buildings was all done by it's inhabitants.
<br>
<br>The primary theme in this nobel prize winning novel is the endurance of humanity and fight for survival. Survival is a fight every human must take part in, although ones fight is much easier than anothers. The fight for survival is tough in the camp especially under the severe conditions, the cold and the brutality of the guards and camp life. The author has paid special and close attention to the weather, the bitter cold, it is not made an extremity, but the facts. A prisoner had 1 grubby blanket, covering his mattress, which incidentally was made of sawdust, this blanket was

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Tunnel Movie Analysis

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages

    On the first day, within the first twenty minutes, two men tried to pass off as Russians who were allowed out of the camp to cut down trees while others hid in the trucks full of trees. None of them escaped, but it showed how witty, adventurous and desperate those men were. Another man, Capt. Hilts, one of three Americans at the camp, stepped across the warning wire where we had tossed his baseball to check out a blind spot between the guard towers. His feet were shot at and then he was sent to the cooler, an isolation cell, along with Ives ‘The Mole’, one of the men who attempted escape on…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Soviet Union DBQ

    • 840 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In 1924, the Soviet Union faced a power struggle when it’s leader and creator Vladimir Lenin died. His successor however, came into power and immediately began to make changes. This man knew exactly what he wanted to keep and more importantly what he wanted to change. His birth name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, but who could possibly rule and leave a legacy with that name? He then adopted the name Joseph Stalin, (which means man of steel.) and began to rule the Soviet Union. At this time, the Soviet Union was well behind all the other countries; Stalin made many changes to the soviet society, employing many methods to achieve his aims.…

    • 840 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Night, Elie Wiesel goes through a journey as he and his fellow Jews are deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. There, for the first time in his life, he is tested with his beliefs as he encounters and witnesses acts of barbarity. Through this, Elie discovers that atrocities and cruel treatment can turn decent people into brutes. Unfortunately, Elie is one of those people – he does not escape this fate.…

    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The book Night is about the holocaust as experienced by Elie Weisel from inside the concentration camps. During World War II millions of innocent Jews were taken from their homes to concentration camps, resulting in the deaths of 6 million people. There were many methods of survival for the prisoners of the holocaust during World War II. In the book Night, there were three main modes of survival, faith, family, and food. From the examples in the book Night, faith proved to be the most successful in helping people survive the holocaust.…

    • 1234 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The memoir of Night uses characterization, setting, and mood to show what lengths people will go to to ensure their own survival. Wiesel uses examples of himself and his father, they barracks they stayed in, the snowy landscape and many more to express what people have done to each other so they can live. Wiesel’s examples portray the theme excellently, and shows the horrors of what has been done to ensure survival in…

    • 576 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Part 1 of the book was “Experiences in a Concentration Camp”. This introduction is structured around Victor’s observations of three distinct phases of the average prisoner’s psychological response to their life in a concentration camp. He expounded on the symptoms they endured upon their arrival at the concentration camp. The phases consisted of being entrenched in camp life, and the phase following their liberation.…

    • 529 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Human beings react and cope with difficult and oppressive environments in different ways. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie has to survive the ever present dangers of life in Jewish concentration camps while trying to keep his father alive who is imprisoned along with him.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chilean Mine Collapse

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages

    During those darkest days of not knowing, the families must have found comfort with each other. As other families of trapped miners were the only people who could understand what each individual was feeling and the uncertainty that no one wanted to concede. As the rescue efforts continued what information and details were given the families who lived at Camp Hope. This saga closely followed would show classic patterns of human behavior under extreme pressure with an exact ending of this drama, especially the timing, remaining uncertain. Going forward, the story is not about life and death. It is about endurance, resilience, and the power of hope.…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    _The Death of Ivan Ilyich_ is a complicated novella with many different themes which could be reviewed. As is plainly evident from the title of the work, death is a major concept as well as how Ivan Ilyich handles his journey through the dying process. Ivan Ilyich's family must also traverse his death although they do not react in the same ways. Ivan Ilyich's illness and death are represented in the book through the five stages of grief that Kubler Ross models, which in some ways we can see by the way his family and doctors react both morally and ethically towards Ivan Ilyich.…

    • 1491 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A man's search for meaning

    • 1258 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Dr. Frankl elaborates on the psychological motives of both prisoners and himself in his novel A Man’s Search for Meaning. He starts by explaining, “It is easy for the outsider to get the wrong conception for camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity. Little does he know the hard fight for existence which raged among prisoners” (22). Frankl gives insight on how difficult it was to live, but also to survive in the conditions of the camp. It shows how the men begin focus on merely surviving in such an environment, almost succumbing to their animalistic nature. He begins by recalling how after getting off the train that had brought them to the death camp, the men and women were stripped from their belongings and then separated into two lines were a man who would either point left or right. One way was the direction to the crematories, the other to a cleansing station.…

    • 1258 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout European history, there has been a trend towards romanticizing the agrarian lifestyle. From the whitewashing of folktales to Stalin-era propaganda musicals, the idealized peasantry are presented as harmonious, cheerful, and cooperative. This view was especially prevalent in imperial Russia at the end of the 19th century, with many writers believing that the Russian peasantry’s “cooperative and communitarian” nature would serve as a model for a future socialist Russia (xv). In an attempt to correct this “naive” view, the Russian ethnographer Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia spent four years observing several villages around her home estate, chiefly the village of…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    All But My Life Analysis

    • 1298 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The desire for power, fear, and self-preservation can cause people to change in ways one could not imagine. In the story, Night by Elie Wiesel, and Gerda Weissman Klein’s All But My Life, the authors share their tragic experiences from their times in Nazi concentration camps. In Addition, Klein’s All But My Life shows her experience in many different concentration camps for three years and how differently female inmates were treated than male. In Wiesel’s Night, he discusses his experience of being sent to Auschwitz along with his father for a year and how the tragedies he endured transformed his character. In Addition, Klein’s All But My Life shows her experience in many different concentration camps for three years and how differently female…

    • 1298 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Eyewitness Auschwitz

    • 513 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The memoir greatly details the resilience of the human spirit, the choices individuals were faced with and decided to act upon and, the treatment of those who had succumbed. The personal choices that some made were extremely unmoral. “"Every day we saw thousands and thousands of innocent people disappear up the chimney. With our own eyes, we could truly fathom what it means to be a human being. There they came, men, women, children, all innocent. They suddenly vanished, and the world said nothing ..” An example of an unmoral prisoner was the Kapo Mietek, who was trusted to discipline the working prisoners. According to Muller, it was not necessary for Mietek to treat his fellow prisoners as human beings but rather beat them mercilessly to gain appreciation from the Nazi leaders. Another theme that Muller presents in his testimony is dehumanization of the camp’s victims. Approximately seventy percent of the prisoners that arrived at Auschwitz were immediately gassed. Their hair was shaven and their bodies were exploited in order to find valuables for the Nazi’s economic gain.…

    • 513 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Holocaust and war was no joking matter. Millions were executed both intentionally and unintentionally. Men, women, husbands, wives, parents, grandparents, and children; The SS didn’t care. Nor did the Poles, Germans, or anyone at all for that matter. Nobody cared about the “dirty Jews”, the “filthy dogs”, or the “swine dogs”. There were so many insults that it’s impossible to name them all. People were malnourished, lonely, and hopeless. This torture was part of the everyday life of a young man named Lucek Salzman (George Lucius Salton). This boy lost his parents at age 14 and his brother at age 15. He was beaten, he had paint poured over him, his latter was kicked by a German soldier (this ended up causing him to have an infected leg). What this man went through as a child was brutal, but the fascinating part is that he never gave up and he knew that he had a chance. Lucek Salzman had hope in the end.…

    • 2118 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    There are so many cultural aspects which expose cultural life of our country, that it is hard to choose only one. I heard that many foreigners are afraid of severe Russian winter. This statement is not groundless, at the same time it is not wholly true. The temperatures in various regions of Russia differ due to the great size of the country. For example, Yakutia, in the eastern part of the country, is the coldest place in Russia. The temperature there falls to 50 degrees Celsius below zero (about 58 degrees Fahrenheit below zero). However, in the middle part of Russia the temperature column hardly ever reaches -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature is usually from -10 up to 0 degrees (-14 – 32). So, as you can see, the weather is not so cold. Still, there are frosty days when it is practically impossible to stay outside. For such cases Russians created special footwear which is called “valenki” (you can see them in the attached picture).…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays