Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : The Battleline Between Good And Evil Runs Through The Heart Of Every Man

Fanaticism. A movement characterized by extremist views. Fanatics have always been present in our society, be it in the previous century with fascists, or today with the Taliban. It is now a concept that is feared by many; however, it is crucial to keep it in mind as humanity advances towards the future. In his novella Night, Elie Wiesel offers the perspective of a victim of religious persecution facing the injustices of fanaticism through a first-person recollection of the Holocaust. Now, seventy years following the unforgettable events of World War Two, Malala Yousafzai is walking a similar path. Yousafzai, a victim of Taliban oppression, is opposing fanaticism through the advocacy of female rights and education. Both of these visionaries provide insight to the development of fanatic terrorism and humanity’s struggle against it. Fanatic movements, as they are catalyzed by complacency and indifference, can only prevented by the oppressed speaking up and the promotion of advocacy for education around the world.

Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who also had survived the Holocaust, writes “When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves” (BrainyQuote). Frankl survived genocide against his own people and still chose to have a positive outlook on it because he understands that if he did not, he would continually live an unhappy, upset life. Like Frankl, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, the main character in One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, contains a similar outlook to that of Frankl. The novel takes place during Soviet Russia in a gulag in Siberia, or otherwise known as a labor work camp. The whole book is about only one day that Shukhov lives; from 5 in the morning to 10 at night and all that happens in between. In this labor camp, not only are the weather conditions very cold, making it difficult to work in such circumstances, but also the workers are punished and harshly treated if they do not obey the guards. When placed in this environment, it is easy to be discouraged and miserable, but instead of facing the negatives of his situation, Shukhov remains affirmative in his thoughts – which are most important in order to survive not only physically, but also mentally. This stoicism portrayed in the narrative can also be found in Epictetus’s work, The Handbook. In this text, Epictetus discusses how he believes people can live a happy life, despite the hard conditions they are put through

Night and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich express the potential horrors of humanity’s immense capacity for extreme cruelty. Both took place in mid-twentieth century Europe and exposed the hardships of life in forced-labor camps: Wiesel’s in various concentration camps, Solzhenitsyn’s in Gulags. It is important for human populations to be aware of these tragedies so as to not commit the same atrocities again; therefore, this essay will explore each with regards to shared or different themes included and the messages presented. Both of these books are important due to their influential and informative nature regarding the horrors of their respective historical times. Night by Elie Wiesel and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr

The human race has always struggled with the simple task of being humane. This started with the people killing over land, all the way to terrible events, such as the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel does a great job in his book, Night, talking about some of the things the Nazis did. The Nazis treated the Jewish people in the most inhumane way history has ever seen. The book approaches this just by throwing it directly in one’s face. Elie has a lot to say about humanity and inhumanity, as does Morrie Schwartz. Morrie is a Professor at Brandeis University and does a great job explaining why humanity should overcome inhumanity. Both Elie and Morrie agree that humanity and inhumanity were both very big things in their lifetime and humanity can be achieved through love, and concern for others.

The Great Terror was one of the single greatest loss of lives in the history of the world. It was a crusade of political tyranny in the Soviet Union that transpired during the late 1930’s. The Terrors implicated a wide spread cleansing of the Communist Party and government officials, control of peasants and the Red Army headship, extensive police over watch, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, and illogical slayings. Opportunely, some good did come from the terrors nonetheless. Two of those goods being Sofia Petrovna and Requiem. Both works allow history to peer back into the Stalin Era and bear witness to the travesties that came with it. Through the use of fictional story telling and thematic devises Sofia Petrovna and Requiem, respectively, paint a grim yet descriptive picture in a very efficient manner.

Plato’s account of a tyrant is close to that of the “great” Soviet Leader, Joseph Stalin. In Book IX of the Republic, Glaucon notes that under a tyrannic rule, a city or state will be tragic and depressing; additionally, it is also stated that city will always experience more freedom and content under a king. (Bloom, 257). This account is a key factor in comparing Stalin with the Republic, as Stalin’s ambitions were similar with Plato’s descriptions. Using other descriptions from Plato’s Republic, it clear that Joseph Stalin fits Plato’s account of a tyrant. The Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin suffered greatly and the tyrant rule of Stalin was oppressive, restrictive, and produced great amounts of casualties. We are comparing how Plato’s account for a tyrant is accurate of the results of Joseph Stalin; that a city will experience freedom with kingship, as well as darkness and scrutiny under a tyranny.

“One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.

The face of true evil is highlighted in the personal accounts of Elie Wiesel in the memoir Night which details the crimes of the Nazis in concentration camps and the mistreatment and murder of over 6 million innocent civilians. His haunting writing allows people to grasp the most horrifying experience a person or an entire race can endure. According to Elie Wiesel, he writes to transmit the messages and give voices to the millions of dead. So they can show not only how the reader should feel but also how they felt. All the emotions of those who were lost and the personal emotions of the author are transmitted through Elie Wiesel's writing to allow the reader to feel the frustration and sadness of all those six million people.

Society was robbed of their humanity and brainwashed into believing that one race was superior. During World War II, brutality became a custom and was used as a tool to instill fear in the lives of millions of Jewish people. Elie Wiesel is the author of the autobiography, Night. Night shows the holocaust through the perspective of Elie Wiesel, a young, jewish boy at the time of the holocaust. The book follows him going to Auschwitz in 1944, and facing trauma during the time of World War II, during the reign of Hitler. Elie Wiesel was affected by the holocaust and transformed not only physically, but mentally due to the suffrage that he endured at the hands of the Nazis, at a time when he felt most vulnerable.

Horrendous situations such as the Holocaust reveal just how much of a person’s beliefs and principles are based upon the environment one is in. If one studies such a period of inhumanity and barbarity, it becomes quite clear that the difference between a devout Jew and an Atheist is not as large as it may seem; for, the time it takes for someone to transition from one to the other is not long at all when being pushed by the enormous weight of the cruelty at that time. One such example of these monumental transformations is Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and author of the memoir Night. At the beginning of the novel, Elie Wiesel is passionate about his Jewish faith; however, the horrifying acts of cruelty he witnesses at Auschwitz cause him to lose his faith in God.

Ivan IV was a complicated man, with a complicated past, in a complicated country, in a complicated time; his story is not an easy one. Ivan the terrible, the man, could never be completely understood in a few words, nor in a few pages, and only perhaps in a few volumes. A man of incredible range his dreadfulness could only be matched by his magnificence, his love by his hatred.

The work stirred many other Soviet writers to produce works describing their own situations of political imprisonment. Solzhenitsyn soon fell from the state’s grace, however, and was exiled when he attempted to published the first volume of a definitive literary-historical work on the Soviet incarceration system: The Gulag Archipelago. He moved to the USA, where he finished the other two volumes of his masterwork, and returned to Russia in 1996.

Many of Man's struggles are usually the result of societal standards, control, and punishment. These struggles are present in both One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Through setting and internal monologue, both authors depict the effects of the brutalities of communism on Man's spirituality.

At this point, Solzhenitsyn begins his critique of the Western world; his first major point being the West’s “decline in courage” (2). “The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society” (2-3). Solzhenitsyn suggests—years ahead of his time—that the West is growing weary in their opposition of threats to their society, such as the Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union. This is what

Finally, Solzhenitsyn's novel expresses one of the most important Christian principles, hope for the future. In Christianity, since Christ paid the price for the sins of the world, there are no lost causes. Christians have faith that Christ will return someday and that there will be a heaven. In the same way, in the midst of the terrible conditions of the prison camp, Shukhov can be pleased at