One day of Ivan Denissovitch

One day of Ivan Denissovitch (in Russian RU ОдинденьИванаДенисовича ) is a novel of Alexandre Soljenitsyne writes in Russian and published in the review Novy Mir for the first time in 1962 in the context of “Déstalinisation” (however, of many passages were subjected to the censure). The novel describes the living conditions in a Russian camp of forced labor of the beginning of the Années 1950 through the eyes of Yvan Denissovitch Choukhov, prototype of the average Russian peasant whom one follows during one day.

Analyzes

This short novel, written in a sober style and purified, takes again the majority of the expensive topics with Soljenitsyne: the Gulag, the evocation of the deep Russia with its fatalism, its heroism and its lowness. Humor is not absent from this novel: in spite of the deprivations, the Siberian cold, the disease, endured vexations all the day, Choukhov made a success of with grappiller a piece of additional bread, which brings it to this conclusion:

One day of last. Without only one cloud. Almost of happiness.

Of the days like that, in its sorrow, there was, from one end to another, three thousand six hundred fifty-three.

the three of extension, it was the fault at the leap years.

Summary

Choukhov was condemned to the deportation in Camp of work for “treason of the fatherland” because it was made prisoner during the Second world war by the Germans. Although he was condemned to 10 years, Choukhov knows that following the example other convicts, he will probably not leave the alive camp.

The book opens on the alarm clock of Choukhov, patient. To have joined the others late, it is constrained to clean the ground of the body of guard. Its punishment carried out, it goes to the dispensary to seek care there. The Médecin cannot exempt it because it exceeded already its daily quota of sick leave, and returns Choukhov to work. Choukhov belongs to the 104e group of workers, composed of 23 men and a chief with whom them captive owe a total obedience. The men of the camp share their time between forced labors and methods of survival, undergoing a brutal and primary law allowing only most resistant to leave itself there. Choukhov is hard and a worker, which was worth the respect of its pars to him. The rations of food (kacha) are very limited, and represent for the prisoners their only richness that some capitalize, like does it Choukhov. At the end of the day, it manages to render small services in César, an intellectual able to escape manual work while being made useful for the administrative services. César is also privileged, because it receives packages of food of its close relations, whom it divides with Choukhov in thanks of its services.

Finally, the day of Choukhov was productive, almost a good day , because it could survive. This restrictive point of view suggested by Soljenitsyne on the life with the Gulag manages to make evoke the standardized horror which the prisoners undergo, crushed by intolerable living conditions and yet supported without cry, the Torture S which one guesses without being confronted there, the small plunders which allow some, like Choukhov, to live sparely, surrounded by those which collapse in silence, overcome by a deaf violence. Soljenitsyne offers to its readers, in a short and very accessible book, a painting of the cruelty of the system concentrationnaire of the Gulag still reinforced by the subjective point of view of its hero, banal convict, determined to accept the violence of the system while having restricted its Humanité with the elementary needs for subsistence and its hopes to survive until the following day.

External bond

the original text, available in line

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