The Life Of Ivan Denisovich By Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Underground Man is alone because he has chosen to be; he is hyper-conscious, meaning he is too aware and over analyses everything – his biggest worries are petty compared to what is going around him. As a society, we worry so much about ourselves and our own persona, we sometimes become paranoid. A perfect example is given when the Underground Man is on the verge of having dinner with his old comrades and he notices a stain on his trousers “The worst of it was that on the knee of my trousers was a bug yellow stain. I had a foreboding that that stain deprive me of nine-tenths of my personal dignity.” (NU 48) He immediately panics as he worries about whether his friends will see it, and goes as far as to consider forgetting dinner because he is so embarrassed. As shameful as it is to admit, we too have reached the point where we are so concerned with out outer appearance that we let it dominate most of our life – there are several instances where we dictate who we associate with and who we befriend based on their appearance. He is severely misanthropic, marked by hatred, distrust, and disdain toward the human race; he believes himself to be more intelligent and perceptive than most other people, and this contrast with the fact that he despises himself and frequently feels inferior or humiliated. Due to his lack of loving relationship growing up, he goes through life full of shame and self loathing, often falling into existentialism. The Underground Man’s urge for

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

On a day to day bases, men and women in prison or jail are dehumanized and terrorized by their superiors or even their inmates in the Criminal Justice System. The inmates that are in this situation are usually physically, emotionally, and mentally abused, they are often deprived of meals and are belittled. The inmates in this situation have no other choice but adapt to their best ability of the harsh situation they are founded in or be broken and taken over by the system they are forced to be a part of. Is it true that a person in difficult situations needs to be indifferent of their past because being nostalgic can only hurt them? Or does the harsh situation they become a custom to make it easier to forget their past life?. Solzhenitsyn uses Shukhov’s indifferent attitude towards his past to illustrate that a person cannot be nostalgic because it can lead to one’s self-destruction.

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn shows how Soviet prisoners, known as Zeks, are treated while being in the gulag for one day through the eyes of the protagonist and omniscient narrator named Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Despite being in an environment such as the Soviet Union, where there is harsh tundra and not much food to eat, Shukhov tries to make good use of what he has received while trying to keep himself alive. The purpose of Solzhenitsyn’s portrayal of food is to show its overall significance and that it is used as a means of trade and survival. Over time, the power of food reveals its significance to the Zeks and especially to Shukhov and food allows both groups understanding towards the necessity of food for their vitality and well-being additionally.

Through showing the dark and devastating experiences of the Jews during the holocaust, the emotional appeal the reader experiences is increased. As Anthony Acevedo describes, “... his fellow soldiers beaten, starved, and in some cases executed for trying to escape. Forced to dig tunnels for 12 hours a day in the final weeks of the war, the prisoners were given 100 grams of bread per week and soup made from rats.” (1). While Wiesel in a speech said, “When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies…” (217). Through implementing the theme of inhumanity into an emotional appeal, Elie Wiesel allows the reader to feel as though they were in that situation in a diminished manner. The following quotes, exhibits the theme of inhumanity through the use of different punishment methods against prisoners and the effects.

Soviet officials prioritised the establishment of Communist Hegemony in the GDR (Bruce 2003, p. 6) and therefore allocated vast resources to controlling threats (Bruce 2003, p. 14). The end of World War II saw eleven internment camps established, intended for Nazis and those against communism (Bruce 2003, p. 6), and from 1945 to 1954, Erica Riemann found herself interned in a number of them (Molloy 2009, p. 65). We may be aware of GDR paranoia resulting in prosecution of imagined crimes (Bessel 2011, p. 154), but it is through individual stories that the reality of this comes across. The fact that a schoolgirl was interrogated, assaulted and sleep deprived for hours in a dungeon for taking lipstick to a picture of Stalin (Molloy 2009, p. 66) reveals the absurdity and extent of the cruelty that the SED went to. The details of long nightly interrogations and starvation help us understand how a normal teenager ended up confessing to being part of Nazi resistance (Molloy 2009, p. 66). It is through examples of people being mocked, raped, starved, assaulted, threatened and killed that we can begin to imagine the experiences of prisoners. Recounts of Erica’s attempted suicide and the inability to hold relationships (Molloy 2009, p. 73) create a deeper understanding of the

IVAN THE TERRIBLE Book: Ivan The Terrible by Chelsea House The reign of Grand Duke Vasili III in medieval Russia was the beginning of a complete turn-around for Moscow. Moscow got better and better until it became the most powerful city of medieval Russia, and Russia as a whole was under the overall rule of Moscow. Soon, when Vasili III died, he left the big role of ruling all of Russia and Moscow to his older son, Ivan or "Ivan The Terrible".

People were especially brutal during the Holocaust during ‘The Complete Maus’ showing how the Holocaust brought out the worst in human behaviour. On page 110 Germans are depicted swinging children by the legs against walls and even the fact they were children that did not hesitate to be brutal. The Nazis were shown to be beating defenceless Jews with batons, rounding them up to take them to a camp. The Nazis also hung two Jewish people in the centre of town for a week to set an unpleasant of what could happen if you broke the law (pg 85), This shows how brutal the Nazis were against the Jewish people and the undesirable ways they did this.

Gulag Voices by Anne Applebaum is a collection of stories of people who lived in the Gulag camp system because the NKVD arrested them for political crimes. All of the stories in this novel describe different situations the prisoners endured. Some female prisoners were raped while the male prisoners were sent to concentration camps to support the soviet industry by mining, cutting trees for lumber, or working in factories. This novel gives real background into how the camp system changed their lives and stayed with them forever. Gulag Voices shows the prisoners coped emotionally, psychologically, and physically with being in the camp system. The stories from this novel also show why some of the prisoners were arrested and what the crimes they

In Fulcrum, Alexander Zuyev details what his life was like from his childhood up until his defection from the Soviet Union. Born in 1961, Zuyev spent his childhood in the Russian town of Samara in a simple apartment with his mother and father. While his father moved out when he was young, Zuyev’s mother raised him under strict rules in order to keep his grades up in school. His mother was also a devout Communist who believed the government of the Soviet Union was advancing society in the right direction. However, Alexander Zuyev began to recognize problems in his society at a young age. For instance, one of his friends who lived in his town resided in a high class home and

Robert Cottrell is reviewing Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman, who is also the co-author of Khrushchev's Cold War, a work investigated in the summer assignment. Cottrell has worked for The Economist and Financial Times as Moscow bureau chief and has written a plethora of reviews on the topic of Russia; he also hosts the website The Browser where he reviews and recommends books to a general audience. Adeptly summarizing and analyzing the main points of Taubman's book, he makes a few points which are contrary to some of the other sources analyzed in the summer, such as saying that the public effect of the 20th congress speech was not noticeable and that Khrushchev's negotiations over the Cuban Missile crisis were "panicky" (FOOTNOTE).

In the novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn the genre political satire was used. The genre political satire is an important section of satire that focuses on achieving entertainment from mocking politics which relate to our society. These types of novels help readers reflect on their own life style and society, learning how to improve themselves. There were 3 elements I chose which were used in this novel to display political satire. The three elements are irony, sarcasm and parody which display this type of genre very well. The novel is about men who are put into camps by the government and are forced to work and do whatever the commanders want them to do. They are not given any rights to be free and do

The One and Only Ivan is about how a gorilla named Ivan was put into a mall with a bunch of other animals for people to look at. While he was at the mall he made an elephant friend whose name was Stella. Stella was pregnant and hurt at the same time. So whenever she gave birth, she ended up dying a few days later. The baby elephant's name was Ruby. So after Stella died Ivan and Ruby wanted to get out. But there was only one person to understand them. Her name was Julia. One day Julia finally figured out what Ivan was saying and put up a sign on the highway telling them to let them free from the mall. The sign ended up making a big impact on everyone which helped Ivan and Ruby get out of the mall.

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, he states a paradox in Chapter 29 Grand Inquisitor between freedom and bread through the mouth of Ivan. Indeed, when freedom works for every individual man, the result might not always be happy. Freedom means making choices and taking their consequences independently. Thus, the result might be good or bad, also may be disastrous. For some people, have bread without freedom can also be happy, Ivan even believes the majority only want the bread but not the freedom. ()

“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.” –The Grand Inquisitor” “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” - Father Zosima. These two quotes voice the polarized philosophies that impregnate the book, The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan, the second of the three sons, and Zosima, the old monk, are huge commentators on the question, “Is the burden of free will to much for a human to bear?”