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Sunday, August 24, 2014

Line Illuminator - Isa Farhat

Title: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Author: Aleksandr Solzheintsyn

Job: #1 Line Illuminator

       This weeks read was: vii - xviii (introduction) ; pg. 3 - 22. A good start for the book, but a confusing one, too. This week I am the Line Illuminator, prepared to bring out interesting quotes that brought my attention. 


Quote #1: "The sky was still quite dark. The camp lights drove away the stars. The broad beams of the two searchlights were still sweeping the zone." (Pae 17, paragraph 5)
       This isn't the type of quote that you may chose, but it stood out to me. Maybe it was because the way the words were formed, in such a delicate way which made the sentence flow very well. The quote also used stops, like small frases one after the other, it gave the voice inside my head feel what the character is feeling. 
       I feel like the quote is trying to give us the emotion that the person in the book is feeling. The quote continues talking about the "special camp" that he is in, and how it felt like war. 


      This is a picture of a helicopter searchlight. I chose this picture because I couldn't imagine hwo it would be to live in a place where this goes on every night because of lack of trust. 

Quote #2: "And now here he was dreaming of being ill for two or three weeks, not dangerously ill, of course, not so bad that they'd have to operate, yet bad enough to go to the hospital and lie in bed for three weeks without stirring; and let tem feed him on nothing but that clear soup of theirs, he wouldn't mind." (Page 21, paragraph 4)
       Quite a long quote, yet quite a powerful one, I think. I feel like this quote says a lot about how the men and women in this "special labor camp" think and emotionally feel about them being there. Maybe it makes them regret what they have done wrong, to be placed in a place like this. 
       I think this quote is trying to get the readers to notice what Ivan DEnisovich is going through. Even in this camp, he wants to be ill, to lay in bed for weeks. Imagine if it was you.
I chose this pictre because I believe that even if Ivan is regreting what he has done, I will learn from hism mistakes because, everyone does. 








3 comments:

  1. Isabella,

    What an excellent post! I really liked the way you analysed the chosen quotes (which were very well picked) in this thoughtful, insightful way.

    To start, I agree with you in every aspect of analysis that you included in your post. However, I think I see some things a bit differently as well. For instance, in the first quote I was quite impressed more with the security of the army camp. The phrase mentions the searchlights that were on basically all night long, in case a prisoner decided to try and escape. This gives me a bit of sense of how harsh life could be in a place like this, where the conditions are so miserable and you cannot even escape.

    Moreover, the second quote made me think on how difficult Ivan's life could be, once again. I have this opinion because the passage says that he wanted to be ill for the next two to three days. This makes me think that the situation there is so bad that he would prefer to die or be ill and be fed while doing nothing instead of going on living like this. Overall, these quotes were very well chosen in general, and it was really good that we could brainstorm so many ideas.

    Thanks for sharing your knowledge with me!

    Thiago Rossi

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  2. Isa, I thought your post was extremely interesting, as you saw things I did not notice at first.
    For the first quote, I think there is a sense of how the person is feeling, how they are seeing this land in war. It is setting the stage for more to come. However, what most stood out to me was not the way that the search lights were described, but rather that there were search lights. This was in the very beginning, when we did not know what exactly was going on or who they were talking about and why he was there exactly. We know from the introductory paragraphs that it was a labor camp in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and we can assume that these are security lights. I feel like there is some sense of being constantly watched even in the darkest times of the night, and that there is no freedom for the prisoners.
    The second quote, for me, is more of a sense of trying to make this life at the labor camp the least painful possible. I still have no idea what Ivan did to end up in this prison camp, and if he regrets it or not, however I do understand where you are coming from. Obviously it must be terrible to live there. I remember this line sticking with me while I was reading the book, because of the line of thought that it shows. If he would rather be sick, than live the life he does, the conditions must be truly miserable. We look at being sick as something to avoid, but he seems to think that it would be better than whatever he has to wake up to in the morning, which we already know is a almost inhumane environment.
    Your post was really good overall, and I love the way you picked the first image, because it truly does give us a vibe and feel of what you are talking about.

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  3. Isa, To start with. I think that you did a great and thoughtful post. I think that you show one of the core values here that is opened-minded because you choose two quotes that I would never have chosen and basically because I didn’t have the thinking that you did in this quotes. For example I wouldn’t picture much as like what you said that you put yourself in the characters shoe and I think that I wouldn’t have thought about it like that. So overall I think you did a really good job.

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