One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich​ by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ​ Notes on the novel

On this paper, you are expected to demonstrate your ​analytical knowledge​ and ​critical understanding​ of the novel through your ​response
to character, theme and craft. Remember that the main focus is CONTEXT. In responding, always focus on the 3 Cs: ​content, context
and craft
● Refer to key detail from the novel; select quotations to learn when writing your notes.

Context notes One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich​ written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1962, highlights the daily life of Ivan, a
prisoner under the Gulag system of the feudal Soviet Russia. Set in a Siberian prison camp, the development in
morals and survivalist nature of Ivan and his other inmates is recorded.
- Daily experiences is reflection/ negative critique of wider context of russia as a whole and
communist ideology

- Social commentary
- Criticise political ruling of the time
- Book relevant to other contexts
- Ivan (not political activist, ordinary man fictionalised)
- Prison
- Microcosm of what is happening in Russia
- Government sanctions prison
- Tiny things in Ivan’s day that are symptomatic of a brutal regime
- Kept at a level of starvation that makes then deferential
- Life in meaningless, authorities only want work out of them
- Life is tenuous

- GULAG system
- Soviet bureaucratic institution
- Revolution in 1917
- Lead to creation of forced labor camps
- Stalin’s ruling increased presence of camps
- Turn soviet union into ‘industrial power’
- Soviet Russia
- feudal society
Main Themes:
- Consequences for actions: fear
- Propaganda
- Government has complete power: totalitarian
- Re-writing history
- “The cult of personality”
- The trails = denunciations
- Anythi

- Book set 1951

- Stalin died 1953

- Time central to book

- Small details reflective of wider attitude
- Easily visible numbers
- Pristine uniform
- Punishment
- Beating
- Solitary confinement (many who go in don’t come out)
- Food ration taken (food form of abuse/sanction or reward)
- Big fear
- Thoughts that occupy prisoners
- Survival
- In the present/ near future
- Before stalin regime
- Russia massive agrarian culture
- Stalin take people off land and into factories
- Later into collectivized farms
- Efficiency
- Eroded traditional Russian way of life
1.
Summary of key events e.g.
Reveille, Guardroom, breakfast
(pp7-18)
Ivan S854
Prison structure
- ‘Shut the door you scum’
- ‘Hey there skunk, take it
easy’
- ‘How much water are you
going to use, idiot’
- ‘Didn’t you ever watch your
woman scrubbing the floor,
pig?’
- ‘When you worked for the
knowing you gave them
quality; when you work for
a fool you simply gave him
eye-wash.’
The Sick Bay (aspects of the
system)
- Numbers on prison jacket
important
- Touching up when
faded
- Part of identity
- Distinguish status
- Rituals to reinforce status
- ‘Authorities knew
the time for them
Searching during count
- Numbers:
Characterisation
Many characters emblematic of a theme
Ivan (40 years old)
- Experience from previous camp
(Ust-Izhma in 1943)
- Scurvy from last camp
- Losing hair
- Using time before reveille
- Know not to take what is not his
- ‘His ears told him everything”
- Routine
- Been there a long time
- Never given or taken a bribe
- Represents honest truth
- Trust his perspective
- Not corrupted by system
- Kept sense of self
- (key to his survival)
Volkovi
- Volk: wolf in Russian
- ‘God has named the
rogue appropriately’
- Security chief
- Luitenant
- Carries whip
- ‘Dark, tall, with a scowl, very
quick in his movements’
- ‘Stride out of the staff quarters’
- Confident
- High status
- ‘Unpopular with the prisoners as
with the guards’
Craft
● imagery associated with
time, cold, light, food
● Narrative perspective
Bread rationing
- Why always short:
- ‘There was short weight in
every ration. The only point
was how short.’
- Corrupt system
Use of detail
- ‘Twenty grammes short’
- ‘A little clean pocket he’d
sewn under his jacket’
- Detail of events hiding bread
- Extent of care to hide
something from the guards
- Calculated and experienced
- ‘Stitch, stitch, stitch’
- Represents the risks of being
careless
- Small tasks amplified to show
the brevity of situation
Article 58
- Form of political treason
- Political threats to regime
- Ivan convicted under this
- Simple character,
unreasonable regime
to convict him
Themes
Gulag work ethic
- Tiurin, Pavlo, Der, Tsezar: 40-42
- Tiurin:
- ‘Took pains to see they got better
rations’
- Fair team leader
- ‘True son of the GULAG’
- Serving second term
- Tiurin knows Ivan (picked him for
team)
- Controls work assignments
- Bribe with pork fat
- Der:
- Convict, pig
- ‘Treated his fellow-prisoners
worse than dogs
- Zek is prisoner
- Food in past: 43
- Eating in his old village
- Abundant food
- ‘Enough to spill their guts’
- Now does not believe that way of
eating (‘you had to eat with all
your mind on the food’)
- Workmates: 44-45
- Estonians
 - Emphasise detail in search
- Exact quantities of bread
ration
- Fear of prisoner escaping
- Guards at risk
- Animalistic imagery:
- ‘He was a wolf’ Volkovi
- (volk means wolf)
- ‘Stung by the blow’
- ‘His victim’
- ‘Run their paws over the
zeks’
Kolkhoz (Ivan past village)
- Population not growing
since war
- ‘Reduced to its former
condition’
- Men not returning from war
- Work in factories instead of
farms
- ‘Seasonal workers’
- ‘Men weren’t working in
their own villages - that he
couldn’t swallow’
- strip men in the cold’
- ‘Even the camp commandant
was said to be afraid of him’
- ‘Said to’
- Rumours about him
- Breeding fear
- Well known
- ‘The men would dash
away in a wave’
- ‘Frisking perfunctorily’
- ‘Savage zeal’
Tsezar
- Upper Class family
- No political conscience
- Not thinking about reality
Buinovsky (how worthless prisoners
are)
- Ivan better equipped to survive
camp life
- In camp less than 3 months
- Argues with Volkovi and received
ten days solitary
- Not used to camp life/ ways of
system
- Not submit, will not
survive
- ‘You have no right to
- False sense of political authority
in camp
- Ministerial role in former
life
- Scented to solitary for most
inocuos reason
- Russia comprised of ministries
- Fetiukov:
- ‘The jackal’
- Not fussy
- desperate/ scavenging
- Senka:
- Deaf
- ‘Quiet, luckless fellow’
- Eardrum smashed in ‘41
- Alyosha:
- Religious
- Gulag system: 51-56
- Work teams set up so prisoners
motivate each other
- Hard workers and
slackers
- ‘How time flew when you were
working!’
- Days go by fast (but not years)
- Grand scheme of things
- Absolute Control
- ‘A new decree has been
passed, and now the sun
stands highest at one’
(soviet power passed
decree)
- Hierarchy
- Fear of Fetiukov (captain)
- ‘More depended on the
work-report than the work
itself’
- Fetykov and Buinovsky - Higher bonus to guard
had roles in ministry lieutenants (extra bread)
- Usually outside have - Corrupt hierarchy
privileges

- Food
- Cold
- Prison guards & rules
- Corruption and hierarchy
- Prisoners
- Life in prison vs life in Russia

45. Sanka
Stalin thought POW
Anybody caught as POW sent ot
concentration camp
Those survived on russian side accused
of being torturted and give german
information
Trisonous to russia
Put in gulags
Ludicrousness of system