How did historical events influence the ideas in the novel? What cultural issues may have influenced, challenged, or inspired the author?
In the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, it is obvious that historical events and cultural issues influenced the book, and how the author wrote it. To begin with, the book is basically an autobiography of the author, but telling only about one day in his life, in a Gulag, in the Soviet Union. The reason that he is in that "prison" is that he was accused of betraying his country in the second world war. In real life, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author, was also accused of writing letters to other people about the Soviet union's leader, Joseph Stalin. In these letters, there were insults that refereed to the leader. He Was arrested from 1944 to 1945, and then was sentenced to stay eight years in a cold and miserable "detention" camp, which is known as a Gulag (NoblePrize.Org).
Next, a big cultural issue influenced this book's author. At the time when he was writing this book, there were barely any books that described from a "criminal's" point of view the gulag camps. When this book was released, it was banned from Soviet Union, and in 1969, he was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers, which is a group of writers that lived in the Soviet Union(Wikipedia). In 1970 he won Nobel Prize,The cultural challenge in this situation is that the author was criticizing, in a way, the government and it's systems in the book, but his country did not accept this. His country made him get out of some things he had, and banned his books. In addition, for his book to be published in other countries, he had to send them to be translated and to be finalized in secret from the government. That is how his book was published outside of the Soviet Union (History.com).
Lucas,
ReplyDeleteI found your post very interesting and insightful. One thing that I liked was how you put words like Prison, Detention, and Criminal's because it explains to the reader something that you have not directly said. One thing that I would have done though is back up why you put that word in quotes. Not directly back it up, but give some reason why you put that word in quotes.