One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: Summary

It is not until Ivan falls ill and is close to death, does he realize he lived “a most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible life”, meaning that he wasted his life by living by propriety; it is also through Ivan’s sickness and suffering that he’s able to find redemption as well as the true meaning of life.

     The other two characters of the novel who represent his opposing sides are Sonya Marmeladov and Svidrigailov. Sonya represents the warm side of Raskolnikov. She is a prostitute forced into that field because her father drinks away the money in the family. She is

Tolstoy uses vivid imagery to describe Ivan Ilych's struggle to submit to his life's end. For example, Tolstoy describes Ivan as feeling as though he is struggling to get inside of a hole. The darkness in the hole obstructs Ivan's ability to get in, and he is unable to get past

    In the face of Morrie's overwhelming compassion and tenderness, Ivan Ilych presents an opposite lifestyle. After a pleasantly carefree childhood he turned towards ambition and pursued an ever-larger salary and an ever-increasing social rank. Ivan lived without values and without attachments, easily moving between cities and jobs. He cared little for the great inconvenience of his family, and even less for his wife: "he hate[d] her with his whole soul" (Ivn, 139). Commitment was a prison to be avoided at all costs, a detriment to his proper and official existence. Genuine love touched Ivan only rarely and certainly not during the dying moments when he needed it the most.

Ivan remembers the moment when he and his sister got caught by humans. He remembers it quite well as he states, “Somehow I knew that in order to live, I had to let my old life die.” (Applegate 92). This statement is significant because this was the moment when Ivan had to accept the fact

Ivan life is very ironic and threw his entire life he plays a big facade in front of people,but he is really different inside than how he performs or acts around the public eye.

Once “…they began to fear that the lie dictated by propriety suddenly would be exposed and the truth become clear to all” (96) This quote is important because it showed how Ivan was not the only one living the way that Ivan lived. Toward the end of the novel Ivan struggles with the idea that his life may not have been as happy as he thought, even though it conformed to what society had taught him comprised a meaningful life. Ivan contemplates, “It’s as though I had been going steadily downhill while I imagined I was going up.

Ivan goes through denial, pretends his illness is just something that will eventually go away. Displays Anger, almost everyone he has contact with is subject to his anger. As for depression, Ivan is in a

During his illness, Ivan beings to discovers that he has been living an artificial life. For instance, all of the people he believed were once his true friends show absolutely no signs of sympathy in regards to his illness. In fact, his coworkers are only concerned with who will be replacing him. In addition, Ivan realizes that his family truly does not love him. He senses that his family’s concern in regards to his illness is false. When his Praskovya and Liza visit him he assures them that he will “soon free them all of himself” (87). All of his accomplishments basically have absolutely no meaning. Ivan “started to go over in his imagination the best moments of his pleasant life. But—strange thing—all of those best moments of his pleasant

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the reader is immersed in life in Ivan Denisovich Shukhov’s point of view. This story is set in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The reader is introduced to a way of life that is unheard of in modern-day Western society. This report will describe the many ways that life in a Soviet labour camp was not something that should be repeated today and why the actions of the Soviet Union and of Josef Stalin’s government were very wrong.

The story contains significant existential elements in the sense that Ivan never considers his mortality until it is too late for him to lead a life more fulfilling.  So, too, we see that all of the social proprieties that Ivan adhered to during his "simple" and "ordinary" life are socially constructed values and rituals that are typically a sham compared to reality.  For example, Ivan's friends care about getting ahead in their careers and the continuation of their bridge game more than they do about Ivan's loss.  This is because despite many people leading simple, ordinary lives in order to follow by rote every social propriety espoused by the status quo, these lives are largely lives of pretense and unfulfilling.  Ivan recognizes this when he thinks, "It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false" (Tolstoy Ch. 11).

In “One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich”, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn presents to us the central leading character named Ivan Deniosovich Shukhov. Shukhov was an inmate at labor Camp HQ somewhere in Russia. He was in the “special camp” for being accused of treason or being involved in political crimes. He was an ordinary individual, who was quite simple, and avoided being bitter. He was disciplined, and not only by the system, but by his own values.

If the characters had truly cared about Ivan, they would have been more content with attending the funeral ceremonies and not seen it as another task to be completed.

is as important to Alyosha as bread is to Shukhov. At the end of the

It is obvious to the reader that this retreat into his work is the soul means by which Ivan moves towards a personal goal of self-justification and righteousness. It is no