Historical events and cultural issues influenced the author and are present in the novel. Historical events influenced the main idea of the novel. The book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is about a man who works at a gulag camp in Siberia. Gulag camps were forced labor camps that Russian prisoners were usually sent to during the rule of Joseph Stalin. The camp in the book is in Siberia, where it is extremely cold and workers cannot stay inside unless it is more that -40 celsius. They have a total of about half an hour each day to eat (they eat three times a day) and do not get much food. The author tells the reader what happens during one day at this camp in the protagonist, Shukhov's point of view. The author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sent to a gulag camp in 1945, for writing a derogatory comment about Stalin in a letter and was released in 1953. (He was then sent into forced exile in Kazakhstan and was allowed back into Russia in 1956.) The genre of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is fiction, but Solzhenitsyn sort of tells the reader his experience in the camp. The cultural issues that may have influenced, challenged or inspired the author are his own experience in gulag camp, and possibly the Holocaust.
Alicia,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your post because it explained a little bit of the book and you made a good reference to the author's life. I also liked the fact that you managed to connect the book's story to a famous historic event, the Holocaust. I also liked the picture you put from the author of the book. Overall, I think your post is good.
Alicia,
ReplyDeleteGood job on your post. I agree with you that historical events influenced this novel. Everything in this book is true. He actually experienced everything in the book. As I was reading the book I was thinking about how horrible it would be to actually have to go through this. I then realized that the author really did. I think he decided to write the book because he wanted people to know what would really happen in the prison camps. I think he wrote it with the goal of informing people, not so much to entertain them.
Alicia,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. I agree with you, historical events are definitely present in this novel. The way the author is able to describe so much of the plot, the setting, the feelings, the characters, the clothes,(basically everything that is going on) makes it very believable. I do wonder how much of it is actually true because it takes a very courageous man to write and publish such a hard experience. Just by publishing this novel, it challenges the world, saying that it's not perfect and it's not even close to being. In my opinion, the reason why Alexandr chose to write this novel is to share what it's really like to be treated unfairly.
Great job!
Martu