Analysis of the work

The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story about how a man from the people relates himself to the forcibly imposed reality and its ideas. It shows in a condensed form that camp life, which will be described in detail in other, major works of Solzhenitsyn - in the novel “The Gulag Archipelago” and “In the First Circle”. The story itself was written while working on the novel “In the First Circle”, in 1959.

The work represents a complete opposition to the regime. This is a cell of a large organism, a terrible and unforgiving organism of a large state, so cruel to its inhabitants.

In the story there are special measures of space and time. Camp is a special time that is almost motionless. The days in the camp roll by, but the deadline does not. A day is a unit of measurement. The days are like two drops of water, all the same monotony, thoughtless mechanicalness. Solzhenitsyn tries to fit the entire camp life into one day, and therefore he uses the smallest details in order to recreate the entire picture of life in the camp. In this regard, they often talk about a high degree of detail in Solzhenitsyn’s works, and especially in short prose - stories. Behind each fact lies a whole layer of camp reality. Each moment of the story is perceived as a frame of a cinematic film, taken separately and examined in detail, under a magnifying glass. “At five o’clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks.” Ivan Denisovich overslept. I always got up when I woke up, but today I didn’t get up. He felt that he was sick. They take everyone out, line them up, everyone goes to the dining room. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov’s number is Sh-5ch. Everyone tries to be the first to enter the dining room: the thickest pour is poured first. After eating, they are lined up again and searched.

The abundance of details, as it seems at first glance, should burden the narrative. After all, there is almost no visual action in the story. But this, nevertheless, does not happen. The reader is not burdened by the narrative; on the contrary, his attention is riveted to the text, he intensely follows the course of events, real and occurring in the soul of one of the characters. Solzhenitsyn does not need to resort to any special techniques to achieve this effect. It's all about the image material itself. Heroes are not fictional characters, but real people. And these people are placed in conditions where they have to solve problems on which their lives and fate most directly depend. To a modern person, these tasks seem insignificant, and that is why the story leaves an even more eerie feeling. As V.V. Agenosov writes, “every little thing for the hero is literally a matter of life and death, a matter of survival or dying. Therefore, Shukhov (and with him every reader) sincerely rejoices at every particle found, every extra crumb of bread.”

There is one more time in the story - metaphysical, which is also present in other works of the writer. At this time there are other values. Here the center of the world is transferred to the consciousness of the prisoner.

In this regard, the topic of metaphysical understanding of a person in captivity is very important. Young Alyoshka teaches the no longer young Ivan Denisovich. By this time, all the Baptists were imprisoned, but not all the Orthodox. Solzhenitsyn introduces the topic of religious understanding of man. He is even grateful to prison for turning him towards spiritual life. But Solzhenitsyn more than once noticed that at this thought, millions of voices appeared in his mind, saying: “That’s why you say that because you survived.” These are the voices of those who laid down their lives in the Gulag, who did not live to see the moment of liberation, who did not see the sky without the ugly prison net. The bitterness of loss comes through in the story.

The category of time is also associated with individual words in the text of the story itself. For example, these are the first and last lines. At the very end of the story, he says that Ivan Denisovich’s day was a very successful day. But then he mournfully notes that “there were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his term from bell to bell.”

The space in the story is also interestingly presented. The reader does not know where the space of the camp begins and ends; it seems as if it has filled all of Russia. All those who found themselves behind the wall of the Gulag, somewhere far away, in an unattainable distant city, in a village.

The very space of the camp turns out to be hostile for prisoners. They are afraid of open areas and strive to cross them as quickly as possible, to hide from the eyes of the guards. Animal instincts awaken in a person. Such a description completely contradicts the canons of Russian classics of the 19th century. The heroes of that literature feel comfortable and at ease only in freedom; they love space and distance, which are associated with the breadth of their soul and character. Solzhenitsyn's heroes flee from space. They feel much safer in cramped cells, in stuffy barracks, where they can at least allow themselves to breathe more freely.

The main character of the story is a man from the people - Ivan Denisovich, a peasant, a front-line soldier. And this was done deliberately. Solzhenitsyn believed that it is people from the people who ultimately make history, move the country forward, and bear the guarantee of true morality. Through the fate of one person - Ivan Denisovich - the author of the Brief contains the fate of millions who were innocently arrested and convicted. Shukhov lived in the village, which he fondly remembers here in the camp. At the front, he, like thousands of others, fought with full dedication, not sparing himself. After being wounded, he went back to the front. Then German captivity, from where he miraculously managed to escape. And this is why he is now in the camp. He was accused of espionage. And what exactly the task the Germans gave him, neither Ivan Denisovich himself nor the investigator knew: “What task - neither Shukhov himself, nor the investigator could come up with. They left it just like that - a task.” At the time of the story, Shukhov had been in the camps for about eight years. But this is one of the few who did not lose their dignity in the grueling conditions of the camp. In many ways, his habits as a peasant, an honest worker, a peasant help him. He does not allow himself to humiliate himself in front of other people, lick plates, or inform on others. His age-old habit of respecting bread is visible even now: he stores the bread in a clean rag and takes off his hat before eating. He knows the value of work, loves it, and is not lazy. He is sure: “he who knows two things with his hands can also handle ten.” In his hands the matter is resolved, the frost is forgotten. He treats his tools with care and carefully monitors the laying of the wall, even in this forced work. Ivan Denisovich's Day is a day of hard work. Ivan Denisovich knew how to do carpentry and could work as a mechanic. Even in forced labor, he showed diligence and built a beautiful, even wall. And those who did not know how to do anything carried sand in wheelbarrows.

Solzhenitsyn's hero has largely become the subject of malicious accusations among critics. According to them, this integral national character should be almost ideal. Solzhenitsyn portrays an ordinary person. So, Ivan Denisovich professes camp wisdom and laws: “Groan and rot. But if you resist, you will break.” This was received negatively by critics. Particular bewilderment was caused by the actions of Ivan Denisovich when, for example, he took away a tray from a weak prisoner and deceived the cook. It is important to note here that he does this not for personal benefit, but for his entire team.

There is another phrase in the text that caused a wave of discontent and extreme surprise among critics: “I didn’t know whether he wanted it or not.” This thought was misinterpreted as Shukhov’s loss of firmness and inner core. However, this phrase echoes the idea that prison awakens spiritual life. Ivan Denisovich already has life values. Prison or freedom will not change them, he will not give it up. And there is no such captivity, no such prison that could enslave the soul, deprive it of freedom, self-expression, life.

Ivan Denisovich’s value system is especially visible when comparing him with other characters imbued with camp laws.

Thus, in the story Solzhenitsyn recreates the main features of that era when the people were doomed to incredible torment and hardship. The history of this phenomenon does not actually begin in 1937, when the so-called violations of the norms of state and party life began, but much earlier, from the very beginning of the existence of the totalitarian regime in Russia. Thus, the story presents a cluster of the fate of millions of Soviet people who were forced to pay for their honest and devoted service through years of humiliation, torture, and camps.

Plan

1. Memoirs of Ivan Denisovich about how and why he ended up in a concentration camp. Memories of German captivity, of the war.
2. The main character’s memories of the village, of the peaceful pre-war era.
3. Description of camp life.
4. A successful day in the camp life of Ivan Denisovich.

Solzhenitsyn, Analysis of the work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Plan

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Solzhenitsyn wrote a huge number of different works. And one of them is written about Stalin’s repressions and is called “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” In addition, from this story you can understand how those people who did not want to please and obey the authorities actually lived. But life was very difficult for them at that time. The work begins by telling the whole camp life of the people. In addition, he wants to show readers all the cruelty and injustice of those people who turned out to be traitors to their homeland. At this time, any person could turn out to be a traitor.

One prisoner went to prison, but when the war began, he went to defend his homeland, but after the war he again turned out to be a traitor and was sent into captivity. But one day he managed to escape from prison. And he could have lived calmly and easily, but since Shukhov was a fair man, he immediately admitted it and was punished and sent to a camp.

But here no one is safe from what can happen in this camp. For every disobedience you could end up in a punishment cell. But here the conditions were simply disgusting and very different from the conditions of an ordinary cell. In addition, every criminal had to work and these jobs were difficult and difficult, and sometimes even deaths occurred during this work. Barbed wire was strung throughout the prison so that not a single criminal could escape from here.

Sometimes in such conditions it is difficult to lose human dignity and remain human until the end of your days. You need to be not only honest, but also fair, as well as accept the situation in time and find the right way to solve it. In addition, if you behave correctly and have the right attitude, you can not only be able to live in the most difficult conditions, but also make friends with the right people who will help with everything and support you in a difficult situation and help out if necessary.

So our main character Shukhov is trying to accept the conditions in which he finds himself, and also learn to live in them. In addition, he tries to make sure that his face does not get hurt. He had to spend eight years here, and not every person can withstand this. He learned all the rules and laws of the prison and even learned to follow them and not break them.

Detailed analysis

This work became the first narrative addressed to the mass reader, telling about Stalin's repressions. The story revealed to the general reader and, above all, representatives of the new generation of intellectuals, the hard-hitting truth about what millions had to endure.

In his story, Solozhenitsyn set himself the goal of avoiding unnecessary emotions. He did not strive, unlike writers of an earlier period, to demonstrate the suffering, mental and physical torment that befalls the hero, in order to arouse the reader's sympathy for him. On the contrary, the author’s goal was to show that everyday life itself can be very scary. The title "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" speaks in favor of this. The hero of the story has a name that has become a household name for Russians - Ivan. The expression “one day” should also orient the reader to the fact that this is an unremarkable day, a period of time for a prisoner during which nothing significant happened to him.

By this, the writer sought to once again remind the reader, or rather, give him the opportunity to once again draw the conclusion that anyone could be in Ivan Denisovich’s place.

The work emphasizes that the day described was not bad. Indeed, the hero was able to get an extra portion of gruel and had no trouble from the administration. To a person living in freedom, even with great restrictions on political rights, accompanied by petty control by his superiors, and also constantly experiencing shortages of various kinds of goods, such a day must have seemed terrible. Actually, this is what the writer sought, describing in detail the life of the camp.

Another goal of describing everyday life in captivity was Solzhenitsyn’s desire to bring the reader closer to his hero. The author tried to ensure that those who finished reading his story would be imbued with the feelings and emotions of the character as much as possible.

Considering the author’s further creativity and active rejection of Soviet power, it can be assumed that another of the tasks of the work was anti-Soviet propaganda. Feeling the hero’s helplessness before the camp authorities, including even such insignificant figures as the cook or the barracks supervisor (the same prisoner), the reader should have formed associations with his own life. The life of an ordinary Soviet person was also under constant control, which had nothing to oppose. Solzhenitsyn led to the conclusion that freedom in the Soviet Union is certainly more comfortable and satisfying, but the position of an ordinary person, in principle, differs little from that in which a prisoner is placed.

At the same time, the author also talks about human dignity. His Ivan Denisovich did not take the path of pleasing the administration for small handouts. At the same time, he did not become embittered, did not follow the path of the most seasoned criminals, devouring the weak.

Solzhenitsyn tried to convey to readers the idea that it is possible to survive in conditions of unfreedom (both camps and a totalitarian state), but it is impossible to live like that.

Analysis 3

Such a famous Russian author as Solzhenitsyn wrote many different works. One of them covers the terrible and bloody time of Stalin’s repressions and is called “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” This story also tells about the lives of ordinary people who did not want to put up with that government and many, unfortunately, were subjected to repression. Life in those days was incredibly difficult. The work began with the author describing how people live in the camps. In addition, the author very clearly and contrastingly showed the reader the harshness and injustice of those who allegedly turned out to be traitors to the motherland. In those days, anyone could be targeted by the government.

So one person went to prison, however, when the war began, he was sent to the front to defend his homeland. However, after the war, he was again sent into captivity. One day he was lucky enough to escape from that terrible place. He could have started a calm, new life, but Shukhov was a fair man and confessed to everything. Naturally he was punished and sent back to the camp.

One thing was clear: no one was immune from what could happen in the camp. Any of the prisoners could be sent to a punishment cell only for allegedly behaving unsatisfactorily. Conditions, of course, in the crankcase were terrible, much worse than in a regular chamber. All the criminals did not just sit in their cells, but did not work as hard as they could. The work was so difficult that many died here. It was almost impossible to escape from there, because barbed wire was strung throughout the entire camp.

In such spartan conditions it is very difficult to maintain a positive attitude and at least remain human for the rest of your life. Here you need to be honest and fair, quickly find a way out of any situation and make decisions. If you behave well and help, then there is a great opportunity to make friends with the right people who, in due time, can help you survive in these unbearable conditions, in some places they will help, and in others they will simply support you. In any case, no matter what happens, you must always remain human.

The main character of the work, Shukhov, courageously accepts the harsh conditions in which he finds himself again. He's trying to learn to survive here. In addition, he is trying in every possible way to ensure that his face does not get damaged. He spent 8 years of his life here, and this is quite a long period of time, which not everyone could withstand. He learned to live by prison laws, not to break them, and remained human.

The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a story about how a man from the people relates himself to the forcibly imposed reality and its ideas. It shows in a condensed form that camp life, which will be described in detail in other, major works of Solzhenitsyn - in the novel “The Gulag Archipelago” and “In the First Circle”. The story itself was written while working on the novel “In the First Circle”, in 1959.

The work represents a complete opposition to the regime. This is a cell of a large organism, a terrible and unforgiving organism of a large state, so cruel to its inhabitants.

In the story there are special measures of space and time. Camp is a special time that is almost motionless. The days in the camp roll by, but the deadline does not. A day is a unit of measurement. The days are like two drops of water, all the same monotony, thoughtless mechanicalness. Solzhenitsyn tries to fit the entire camp life into one day, and therefore he uses the smallest details in order to recreate the entire picture of life in the camp. In this regard, they often talk about a high degree of detail in Solzhenitsyn’s works, and especially in short prose - stories. Behind each fact lies a whole layer of camp reality. Each moment of the story is perceived as a frame of a cinematic film, taken separately and examined in detail, under a magnifying glass. “At five o’clock in the morning, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks.” Ivan Denisovich overslept. I always got up when I woke up, but today I didn’t get up. He felt that he was sick. They take everyone out, line them up, everyone goes to the dining room. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov's number is Sh-5ch. Everyone tries to be the first to enter the dining room: the thickest pour is poured first. After eating, they are lined up again and searched.

The abundance of details, as it seems at first glance, should burden the narrative. After all, there is almost no visual action in the story. But this, nevertheless, does not happen. The reader is not burdened by the narrative; on the contrary, his attention is riveted to the text, he intensely follows the course of events, real and occurring in the soul of one of the characters. Solzhenitsyn does not need to resort to any special techniques to achieve this effect. It's all about the image material itself. Heroes are not fictional characters, but real people. And these people are placed in conditions where they have to solve problems on which their lives and fate most directly depend. To a modern person, these tasks seem insignificant, and that is why the story leaves an even more eerie feeling. As V.V. Agenosov writes, “every little thing for the hero is literally a matter of life and death, a matter of survival or dying. Therefore, Shukhov (and with him every reader) sincerely rejoices at every particle found, every extra crumb of bread.”

There is one more time in the story - metaphysical, which is also present in other works of the writer. At this time there are different values. Here the center of the world is transferred to the consciousness of the prisoner.

In this regard, the topic of metaphysical understanding of a person in captivity is very important. Young Alyoshka teaches the no longer young Ivan Denisovich. By this time, all the Baptists were imprisoned, but not all the Orthodox. Solzhenitsyn introduces the topic of religious understanding of man. He is even grateful to prison for turning him towards spiritual life. But Solzhenitsyn more than once noticed that at this thought, millions of voices appeared in his mind, saying: “That’s why you say that because you survived.” These are the voices of those who laid down their lives in the Gulag, who did not live to see the moment of liberation, who did not see the sky without the ugly prison net. The bitterness of loss comes through in the story.

The category of time is also associated with individual words in the text of the story itself. For example, these are the first and last lines. At the very end of the story, he says that Ivan Denisovich’s day was a very successful day. But then he mournfully notes that “there were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his term from bell to bell.”

The space in the story is also interestingly presented. The reader does not know where the space of the camp begins and ends; it seems as if it has filled all of Russia. All those who found themselves behind the wall of the Gulag, somewhere far away, in an unattainable distant city, in a village.

The very space of the camp turns out to be hostile for prisoners. They are afraid of open areas and strive to cross them as quickly as possible, to hide from the eyes of the guards. Animal instincts awaken in a person. Such a description completely contradicts the canons of Russian classics of the 19th century. The heroes of that literature feel comfortable and at ease only in freedom; they love space and distance, which are associated with the breadth of their soul and character. Solzhenitsyn's heroes flee from space. They feel much safer in cramped cells, in stuffy barracks, where they can at least allow themselves to breathe more freely.

The main character of the story is a man from the people - Ivan Denisovich, a peasant, a front-line soldier. And this was done deliberately. Solzhenitsyn believed that it is people from the people who ultimately make history, move the country forward, and bear the guarantee of true morality. Through the fate of one person - Ivan Denisovich - the author of the Brief contains the fate of millions who were innocently arrested and convicted. Shukhov lived in the village, which he fondly remembers here in the camp. At the front, he, like thousands of others, fought with full dedication, not sparing himself. After being wounded, he went back to the front. Then German captivity, from where he miraculously managed to escape. And this is why he is now in the camp. He was accused of espionage. And what exactly the task the Germans gave him, neither Ivan Denisovich himself nor the investigator knew: “What task - neither Shukhov himself, nor the investigator could come up with. They just left it like that - a task.” At the time of the story, Shukhov had been in the camps for about eight years. But this is one of the few who did not lose their dignity in the grueling conditions of the camp. In many ways, his habits as a peasant, an honest worker, a peasant help him. He does not allow himself to humiliate himself in front of other people, lick plates, or inform on others. His age-old habit of respecting bread is visible even now: he stores the bread in a clean rag and takes off his hat before eating. He knows the value of work, loves it, and is not lazy. He is sure: “he who knows two things with his hands can also handle ten.” In his hands the matter is resolved, the frost is forgotten. He treats his tools with care and carefully monitors the laying of the wall, even in this forced work. Ivan Denisovich's Day is a day of hard work. Ivan Denisovich knew how to do carpentry and could work as a mechanic. Even in forced labor, he showed diligence and built a beautiful, even wall. And those who did not know how to do anything carried sand in wheelbarrows.

Solzhenitsyn's hero has largely become the subject of malicious accusations among critics. According to them, this integral national character should be almost ideal. Solzhenitsyn portrays an ordinary person. So, Ivan Denisovich professes camp wisdom and laws: “Groan and rot. But if you resist, you will break.” This was received negatively by critics. Particular bewilderment was caused by the actions of Ivan Denisovich when, for example, he took away a tray from a weak prisoner and deceived the cook. It is important to note here that he does this not for personal benefit, but for his entire team.

There is another phrase in the text that caused a wave of discontent and extreme surprise among critics: “I didn’t know whether he wanted it or not.” This thought was misinterpreted as Shukhov’s loss of firmness and inner core. However, this phrase echoes the idea that prison awakens spiritual life. Ivan Denisovich already has life values. Prison or freedom will not change them, he will not give it up. And there is no such captivity, no such prison that could enslave the soul, deprive it of freedom, self-expression, life.

Ivan Denisovich’s value system is especially visible when comparing him with other characters imbued with camp laws.

Thus, in the story Solzhenitsyn recreates the main features of that era when the people were doomed to incredible torment and hardship. The history of this phenomenon does not actually begin in 1937, when the so-called violations of the norms of state and party life began, but much earlier, from the very beginning of the existence of the totalitarian regime in Russia. Thus, the story presents a cluster of the fate of millions of Soviet people who were forced to pay for their honest and devoted service through years of humiliation, torture, and camps.

The narrative is structured as a documented, accurate, detailed story about one of the 3653 days of the camp life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, who was serving a prison sentence in 1951, and had a personal camp number Shch-854. From the memoirs of the hero and the words of the author-narrator, we learn that Shukhov is a peasant who went to war as a private on June 23, 1941, was surrounded in February 1942 and spent 2 days in fascist captivity, from which he fled “to his own people.” During 2 days of captivity, he was sentenced for “treason to the Motherland” for 10 years, of which 7 years he was in a logging camp in the North, and now, during the action of the story, he works as a mason in a new camp. The action develops over 17 hours - from rising at 5 a.m. to lights out at 10 p.m. The author shows the routine of life in the camp and the relationship between commanders and prisoners in typical daily repeating situations - getting up, breakfast, lining up prisoners and sending them to work, the work of Shukhov and his team on the masonry of the walls of a thermal power plant under construction, a lunch break, finishing work, building and returning to camp, dinner, evening check and lights out. The depiction of the hero’s actions in these situations, his reactions to the environment, the study of his thoughts and feelings become the author’s way of creating Shukhov’s character. A kind of commentary on the fate of the main character, expanding the scope of the story, is the memoirs of Shukhov’s comrades in prison and the author’s judgments about their destinies, which make it possible to show a picture of the tragedy of the people in a totalitarian era. The hero appears as a person who has survived, who has retained wonderful human qualities in himself despite the era and fate.

The circumstances of the publication of the story are a striking and unprecedented example of the existence of art in the Soviet era. The story was written in 1959 and was called “Shch-854 (One day of one prisoner).” According to the author, this was an attempt to “write something that may not be published, but at least you can show it to people!” At least you don’t have to hide!” After the 22nd Party Congress, Solzhenitsyn decides to transfer the manuscript to Novy Mir to editor-in-chief A. T. Tvardovsky. He and the editorial board of the magazine decided to publish the manuscript, but Solzhenitsyn’s story, despite all the efforts of Tvardovsky, could not overcome censorship. Even changing the author's title of the story to a more neutral one - "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" - did not help. Tvardovsky managed to convey the story to Khrushchev for reading. Khrushchev liked the story, but even he decided to carry out the decision to publish it through the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee - the material of the work was so unprecedented. In October 1961, at a meeting of the Politburo, the decision to publish the story was made. The story was first published in the November 1962 issue of Novy Mir. “One Day...” made a deafening impression on its first readers; it became an event of great importance not only in literature, but also in the public life of the era. What caused this?

First of all, Solzhenitsyn based his story on the material of the recent terrible historical past, which was carefully hushed up. This was the first true word of truth about the tragedy experienced by the people. In this word of truth, contemporaries saw hope for the final overcoming of the past.

At the same time, the writer addressed in the story a new topic that seemed impossible in the officially existing literature of the Soviet era - the fate of the individual, the fate of the people under totalitarianism.

The author's precise choice of the social status of the protagonist was of fundamental importance. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is a former peasant collective farmer, a former ordinary soldier of the Red Army. He is the one who, first of all, constitutes the concept of “people”. But according to the official terminology of the era, Shukhov is an “enemy of the people.” “Enemies of the people” in the story are also people of different social status, nationality, and religion. Solzhenitsyn led his readers to the idea that in the era of totalitarianism, through the efforts of the authorities, the people themselves were declared the enemy of the people, and one of the goals of the regime, which called itself “people's power,” was the extermination of its own people. Neither the liberal social thought of the era of the 60s nor Soviet literature was ready for such an understanding of the historical past, for such an assessment of it.

In addition, the literature of the Soviet era included works that entered into a confrontational relationship with the canons of socialist realism. Solzhenitsyn highlighted the private, the individual, in the complete absence of the context of the struggle for a common bright future. The writer gave a clear preference to the eternal, unchanging, rather than new temporary class “values”. In the story, the concept of humanism changed, its only possible positive definition at that time was “socialist.”

The “positive hero” of the story did not have the required set of qualities necessary for a positive hero in the literature of socialist realism. Shukhov has neither “ideological maturity” and “selfless devotion to the cause of the Communist Party”, nor the desire to prove his devotion to communist ideals and affirm them in life; in his mind the class and social do not dominate over the personal.

In the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Solzhenitsyn set out to show the life of the people at the limit of the possible, to show the suffering and pain of the people who, despite everything, retained their courage, did not break, and did not waste their souls.

What character traits and properties does the writer give to the main character?

The “cornerstone” of Shukhov’s personality is his attitude to work. For the hero, physical labor is a natural state in life, a familiar sphere of existence. In the camp, the prisoner encounters only hard, exhausting and exhausting physical labor. This is the main sphere of camp existence. But thanks to his attitude to work, his life experience, Shukhov turns out to be a person who is not knocked out of the rut of life. The hero is used to working honestly, conscientiously, forgetting where and why he works. This attitude to work gives the hero inner freedom. This is how Shukhov works in the scene of laying a wall at the construction of a thermal power plant.

Solzhenitsyn's hero has an affinity for crafts. Formerly a peasant, he becomes a first-class mason. Even in “his own, non-official” time - an hour and a half a day, he sews “someone a mitten cover from an old lining”, sews slippers “from the rags of a vendor”, patches someone’s padded jacket, makes tools for his crafts. Thus, the hero forms strong, diverse connections with the surrounding life, he finds himself firmly rooted in it.

In addition, the habit of work imparts the nobility of Shukhov’s personality. He, like others in prison, lacks the basic necessities. But to make life easier and satisfy the most modest needs, Shukhov does not become either an informer or a “six”, and does not stoop to licking bowls and raking garbage pits in search of scraps. He gets everything he needs in the only honest way possible - he sells his labor. The hero even has a special word that defines his actions - “earn extra money.” So, with the two rubles he earned on the side, he buys tobacco from a Latvian, and when he queues for a parcel for Caesar Markovich, he receives an extra ration of bread in gratitude.

Ivan Denisovich is not capable of decisive confrontation and desperate resistance. He is endowed with long-suffering. All the terrible and cruel injustices that happened to the hero did not cause bitterness in him, did not turn him into a misanthrope or an oppositionist. The hero lives in such conditions where the optimal principle of existence turns out to be the one that sounds in the story: “...groan and rot. But if you resist, you will break.” Adaptation to the camp life of Ivan Denisovich is an adaptation of millions of Russian people to a harsh and dramatic history, an adaptation to the eternal lack of wealth, the harsh difficulties of life, and trials. Adaptation is a feature of a society living under totalitarian rule.

Shukhov has a lively practical mind and ingenuity, which is revealed primarily in his approach to work and attitude towards the environment. The hero is ready to resort to cunning when he manages to snag two extra portions. But the hero’s cunning is never aimed at harming his neighbor, and never aims to deceive his comrade.

Solzhenitsyn's forty-year-old hero has amazing worldly wisdom and an internal harmonious moral measure. He is not merciless and not reckless in condemning human vices and weaknesses. So, Shukhov was still able to figure it out and feel sorry for the “jackal” Fetyukov. Ivan Denisovich, a poorly educated person, is capable of finding answers to the most complex moral and philosophical problems of existence. This is evidenced by the dispute between Alyosha the Baptist and Shukhov about faith. “Willingly believing in God”, “sharply, sublimely” in a desperate moment praying to himself “Lord! Save! Don’t give me a punishment cell!” Because God is the hero’s last hope, Ivan Denisovich refuses to believe in heaven and hell. At first glance, the hero denies traditional ideas about good and evil, virtue and sin. But what caused this and by what moral laws does Shukhov live? The author shows that the hero, under the influence of his contemporary era, the hero who has terrible life experience, finds that traditional ideas about hell and heaven are compromised in his consciousness. He experienced “earthly hell” - a camp, and in this hell, next to true sinners - criminals, there were innocent people, like himself. For an honest person like Shukhov, there is only one moral commandment left - to live according to his conscience. For Shukhov, conscience is a moral law implanted by God in a person’s soul. Solzhenitsyn’s hero lives honestly, according to his conscience, in harmony with God.

Ivan Denisovich soberly assesses his present and future. He “doesn’t really believe” that his sentence will end in two years, that his release is approaching: “When you run out of ten, they’ll say you’ll get another one. Or into exile." Shukhov understands this intellectually, but hope continues to live in his soul. All the days that he must spend in prison were precisely calculated: “There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three such days in his sentence from bell to bell. Because of leap years, three extra days were added.” The internal conflict of the hero's mind and feelings creates a special tragic effect of the story: Ivan Denisovich, innocently suffering and remaining human in the inhumane conditions of the camp, does not expect a quick release from his torment. However, throughout the course of the story, Solzhenitsyn proves that a hero like Shukhov, and the people of which he is a representative, deserve a better life. The hero's fate becomes an indictment of the historical era.

Solzhenitsyn recalled the genesis of the idea for the story: “It was just such a camp day, hard work, I was carrying a stretcher with my partner, and I thought about how I should describe the entire camp world - in one day. Of course, you can describe your ten years of the camp, there, the entire history of the camps - but it’s enough to collect everything in one day, as if from fragments, it’s enough to describe only one day of one... person from morning to evening. And everything will be.”

By what artistic means did Solzhenitsyn manage to show the heroes’ entire lives in one day, and more broadly - in one camp day - the tragedy of the people in a totalitarian era?

The author expands the plot framework of the story, introducing the memories of the characters and the judgments of the narrator. So, from Shukhov’s memoirs and the narrator’s words, we learn the hero’s life story. Solzhenitsyn uses the same technique when talking about the fate of the foreman Tyurin, the cavalry rank, the Latvian Kildigs and other heroes.

The function of expanding the scope of the narrative is carried out in the story by episodes of camp life. Even a small episode is endowed with the most important meaning. This happens when, during dinner, Shukhov notices an old convict who belongs to the noble class and is strikingly different from the rest of the prisoners. We only learn his camp number - Yu-81, which takes on a symbolic meaning in the story. The number is a sign of destruction of a personal name, a sign of an attempt to destroy a person’s identity. But a truly strong personality is indestructible. It is said about the convict: “he sits in camps and prisons, countless times, how much Soviet power is worth.” It becomes a kind of living milestone in the countdown of mass repressions. At the same time, mass repressions appear as a characteristic feature and obligatory sign of Soviet power.

Terrible milestones in the history of the Soviet era appear before the reader from the memories of the characters. So, from Tyurin’s story we learn about the tragedy experienced by the people during collectivization, and about repressions in the army. The brigadier's story will be supplemented by the memories of captain Buinovsky about the events in the fleet during the war. The narrator's stories about the fate of the Latvian Kildigs and the Estonians and Ukrainians-Bandera will show the tragedy of the peoples “annexed” to the USSR.

The terms served by the prisoners (10, 19, 25 years) show the blunt cruelty of the totalitarian regime. The reader also learns about other camps, about the existence of the Gulag Archipelago, which allows one to judge the scale of repression.

The horror of life, the tragedy of human existence under totalitarianism are conveyed by Solzhenitsyn in that the blatant appears in the perception of the heroes of the story as the norm of life. The terrible day that Shukhov lived in the camp seems to the hero unclouded, “almost happy.”

One of the author’s ways of expanding the scope of the narrative is that Solzhenitsyn tells the hero Shukhov his personal camp number - Shch-854 and his camp profession - mason. The voice of the author-narrator sounds on a par with the voices of the heroes of the story, his knowledge of the vicissitudes of their destinies is explained by general life experience, his assessments coincide with the position of the heroes, as noted above, and, in particular, with the views of Shukhov. Thus, the author joins his own fate to the fate of the heroes of the story, and, ultimately, to the fate of the people.

The composition of the work and its language perform an important ideological and artistic function in the implementation of the story's concept. Solzhenitsyn does not divide the work into chapters and parts. The story about one day in the hero’s life appears as a time stream that lasts continuously and relentlessly. The writer manages to convey the special tense atmosphere of camp life. The chronological development of the plot, where each subsequent event is inevitably determined by the previous one, is intended to emphasize the special moral and psychological stress experienced by the heroes. Prisoners have no room for error. One wrong step can become fatal and inevitably change the rest of your life. Nothing can be fixed. Not all heroes of the story pass this test. Shukhov, Tyurin, Kildigs and other heroes cope with it.

The language of the characters in the story and the author is a special element of the work, full of richness, originality and plasticity. The author’s language is indistinguishable from the language of the main character, Shukhov, everything in the story seems to be seen through his eyes. The nature of the narration is close to that of a tale. Solzhenitsyn models the features of oral speech, widely using colloquialisms, vulgarisms, proverbs and sayings in his vocabulary. However, the author's vernacular is masterfully combined with modern literary language. This combination makes the story tangible, immediate and sincere.

The author assigns a special role to camp jargon in the language of the story. Solzhenitsyn introduces jargon in doses and in a measured manner. Their task is not to shock the reader and not to demonstrate fluency in specific vocabulary. The purpose of introducing camp jargon into the language of the story is to create in the reader the impression of the authenticity of the events described. The story ends with a dictionary of jargon compiled by the author and translating the meanings of words from the “camp language” into Russian. This is a special author’s technique, which not only allows the reader to better understand the work, but also leads to the idea of ​​the existence of a special world, the inhabitants of which even created their own language - the language of the Gulag Archipelago.

The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” demonstrated the skill of the writer, who, within such small limits, managed to achieve a wide scope of life, to reveal a multifaceted and living world in which we recognize people who carry the typical features of the era, essential for understanding historical time, a world with many shades , relationships that go beyond the “camp theme.”

Secondary general education

Literature

Analysis of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”

The textbook is included in the educational complex for grades 10-11, which provides teaching according to the literary education program of V.V. Agenosov, A.N. Arkhangelsky, N.B. Tralkova, and complies with the Federal State Educational Standard. Designed for schools and classes with in-depth study of literature. Students are offered a system of multi-level tasks aimed at developing meta-subject skills (planning activities, identifying various features, classifying, establishing cause-and-effect relationships, transforming information, etc.) and personal qualities of students.

Publication and success of the story Solzhenitsyn was helped with the publication of the story by his friend and former cellmate in the special prison of the Ministry of Internal Affairs “Research Institute of Communications,” literary critic L. Z. Kopelev. Thanks to his connections, Kopelev transfers the manuscript of the story to the then editor-in-chief of the literary magazine “New World” Alexander Tvardovsky. “I haven’t read anything like this for a long time. Good, clean, great talent. Not a drop of falsehood...” - this was Tvardovsky’s first impression of the author. Soon, the magazine seeks permission to publish the story “One Day...”. Anticipating the success of the story, A. A. Akhmatova asked Solzhenitsyn: “Do you know that in a month you will be the most famous person on the globe?” And he replied: “I know. But it won't be for long." When the work was published at the end of 1962, the entire reading public was stunned by the revelation story about the inhumanity of the Soviet system.

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov The reader looks at the world of camp life through the eyes of a simple man, peasant Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. A family man - a wife, two daughters, before the war he lived in the small village of Temgenevo, where he worked on the local collective farm. It is curious that throughout the narrative, Shukhov does not have memories of his past - the latter were simply erased from him by the prison regime. Shukhov also finds himself in war: a combat wound, then a hospital, from which he escapes to the front earlier than expected, again war, encirclement, German captivity, escape. But Shukhov, who returned from captivity, was arrested as an accomplice of the Nazis. Accordingly, he faces a prison sentence for aiding the occupiers. This is how Shukhov ends up in the camp.

The textbook introduces students to selected works of Russian and foreign literature of the 20th-21st centuries in theoretical and critical articles; promotes the moral and ideological development of the individual; shows the possibilities of using the Internet in solving communicative, creative and scientific problems. Corresponds to the federal state educational standard of secondary general education (2012).

Features of the image of heroes The story depicts a whole string of prisoners' characters, which represents a cross-section of Solzhenitsyn's contemporary social system: military men, workers, people of art, representatives of religion. All these characters enjoy the author's sympathy, in contrast to the prison guards and staff, whom the author does not hesitate to call “morons” and “lackeys.” Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the moral aspect of the prisoners’ characters, this is revealed in scenes of disputes and clashes between the heroes and shows the complex relationships between the prisoners. Another feature is that the characters are endowed with their own unique portrait features, which reveal the inner side of a person. Solzhenitsyn does not give a detailed, detailed portrait of Ivan Denisovich, but according to his statement, the essential character traits of the hero are responsiveness and the ability to compassion.

The largest Russian writers, contemporaries of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, greeted his arrival in literature very warmly, some even enthusiastically. But over time, the attitude towards him changed dramatically. A. Tvardovsky, who spared no effort and effort to publish an unknown author in “New World,” then told him to his face: “You have nothing sacred...” M. Sholokhov, having read the first story of a literary newcomer, asked Tvardovsky from his name on occasion to kiss the author, and later wrote about him: “Some kind of painful shamelessness...” The same can be said about the attitude of L. Leonov, K. Simonov towards him... Having read the book of one of the most authoritative publicists of our time, Vladimir Bushin, If you personally knew the writer, you will understand what Solzhenitsyn sacrificed for the sake of fame.

Author's assessment Shukhov, even in the most dramatic situations, continues to be a person with soul and heart, believes that someday justice will triumph again. The author talks a lot about the people and their instinct for moral preservation in the demoralizing conditions of the camp. Solzhenitsyn seems to be saying: there is something incorruptible in each of us that no evil can completely destroy. In the most difficult and terrifying living conditions, people manage to maintain their human dignity, kindness towards people, tolerance and inner freedom. One day from the life of the camp, described by the author in all the smallest details, becomes a day in the life of the entire country, symbolizes a historical stage - the time of total state violence, and poses a bold challenge to it.