What moral laws does Shukhov live by? "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" main characters

In the 11th issue of the magazine “New World” for 1962, a story by an unknown author “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published. This was a rare case in literature when the publication of a work of art in a short period of time became a socio-political event.

“The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” lived in our literature for only a year,” wrote the critic of “New World” V.Ya. Lakshin, - and caused as many disputes, assessments, and interpretations as no other book has caused in the last few years. But she does not face the fate of sensational one-day events, which will be argued about and forgotten. No, the longer this book lives among readers, the more clearly its meaning in our literature will become clear, the more deeply we will realize how necessary it was to appear. The story about Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is destined to have a long life.”

It is known that the meaning of a work of art is determined by what new its creator introduced into the history of literature. Today in class we will answer the following questions:

- What new did Solzhenitsyn’s story bring to readers?

- Why is “the story about Ivan Denisovich Shukhov destined to have a long life”?

- What is the secret of such success?

Columbus Archipelago

The novelty of the topic appears already in the first paragraph: “At five o’clock, as always, the rise struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks. An intermittent ringing faintly passed through the glass, frozen into two fingers, and soon died down: it was cold, and the warden was reluctant to wave his hand for a long time.” Never before has the action taken place in a camp.

We read the final lines of the story with the words: “Shukhov fell asleep completely satisfied...” What struck you most in Solzhenitsyn's story? The everyday life of the events described, the contrast between the hero’s well-being and the reader’s perception: a “satisfied” hero, an “almost happy day” - the horror that the reader experiences during the reading process.

Let's listen to the impressions of the first readers. Among them is the famous literary critic M. Chudakova: “Slowly, like a well-rolled corpse in a tarpaulin, accidentally hooked by a ship’s cable, a carefully flooded, hitherto invisible world with its own laws of morality and life, with its own detailed regulations floated up from the bottom of socialism into the light of literature. behavior... We found ourselves in a terrible, but finally our own, non-fictional country...”

The slightly opened crack into the “top secret” world of Stalin’s gas chamber revealed one of the most terrible and burning secrets of the century.

At home you should have found the answer to the question in the text: “Why are the heroes of the story serving time?” When answering the question, briefly introduce each of the characters. Intermediate result: just listing the “crimes” committed by the heroes in comparison with the terms received for them is a stunning indictment of the state system, which mercilessly destroys its own people.

Criticism of the 60s saw in Solzhenitsyn’s story an exposure of individual violations of the law in Stalin’s time, which was publicly announced from the rostrum of the 20th Party Congress by N.S. Khrushchev. This is the only reason why the story was able to see the light of day. In this, the author’s position coincided with the ideology of Khrushchev’s “thaw”. However, the author was far from socialist ideals and, not being able to openly state his position, still reveals it in places. In the book “The Calf Butted an Oak Tree” by A.I. Solzhenitsyn writes: “They accepted me with a bang, while I was apparently only against Stalin’s abuses, then the whole society was with me. In the first things I disguised myself in front of the police censorship - but at the same time in front of the public. The next steps were inevitably for me to open myself: it was time to speak more precisely and go deeper.”

Author's position and official ideology

TO How and in what ways did A.I.’s discrepancies manifest itself? Solzhenitsyn with the official ideology of the 60s in the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”? Student message (individual homework).

The student pays attention to episodes in which they sound:

- criticism of the entire legal system(regarding the “best opinion about Soviet legislation” by captain Buinovsky: “Dudi-dudi, Shukhov thinks to himself, without interrupting, Senka Klevshin lived with the Americans for two days, so they gave him a quarter, and you hung around on their ship for a month - so how long Should I give you?"; "Kildigs himself was given twenty-five. It used to be such a happy period: everyone was given ten years under the comb. But from forty-nine such a period began - everyone got twenty-five, no matter what. You can still live for ten more, without going around, well, live twenty-five?!”);

- lack of faith in justice and the possibility of free life in the country(Shukhov is finishing his sentence, but does not believe in the possibility of release: “Will they even let him go free? Won’t they hang dozens more for nothing?” After all, “no one in this camp has ever had the end of their sentence.” “The law is inverted If you run out of ten, they’ll say you have one more”);

- radical rejection of the entire state system(Solzhenitsyn’s hero feels, if not hostility, then at least the alienness of Soviet power to him: everywhere we see the use of third-person pronouns “they”, “theirs” when it comes to government orders: “Is it really possible that the sun obeys their decrees?”, “Millions have already been poured down the pipe, so they are thinking of making up for it with chips”);

- the writer’s spiritual opposition, the religious basis of his worldview(the views of the believing author are manifested not only in sympathy for Alyosha the Baptist, who is serving time for his faith, but also in the remark of the foreman Tyurin: “You are still there, Creator, in heaven. You endure for a long time, but you hit hard”; and in reproach to Ivan Denisovich, who went through a raid with a hacksaw and forgot to pray with gratitude, although at a difficult moment he “loftily” turned to God with a prayer: “Lord! Save! Don’t give me a punishment cell!”; and in the spelling itself (with a capital letter, not only the name of God , but also a pronoun referring to Him);

- idealization of pre-collective farm life(“In the camps, Shukhov more than once recalled how in the villages they used to eat: potatoes - in whole frying pans, porridge - in cast iron pots, and even earlier, without collective farms, meat - in healthy chunks. Yes, they blew milk - let your belly burst." he “with all his soul yearns for a handful of oats,” which he fed to horses in abundance from a young age”).

Thus, we can assert that Solzhenitsyn’s first printed work is not a story about “individual violations of socialist legality,” but about the illegality, or more precisely, the unnaturalness of the state system itself.

For several decades, Soviet literature sought to embody the image of a new man. The hero of Soviet literature was supposed to be an unbending fighter and an active builder of socialism, a youth of the “steel generation”, a “real man”, a hero of socialist labor. The “Thaw” of the 60s contributed to the emergence of a new hero - the bearer of mass consciousness, the “simple Soviet man.”

- Who is Ivan Denisovich Shukhov?

- What kind of person is he and what impression did he make on you?

- Is this a new hero for Soviet literature?

- And for the Russian? Who can he be compared with?

Ivan Denisovich has a lot in common with the simple Russian peasant of the 19th century classics, with the same Platon Karataev, with Leskov’s heroes. His moral ideas are based on traditional, Christian values. We see Shukhov’s gentleness, helpfulness, his peasant cunning, his ability to adapt to unbearable conditions and be happy with little. The protagonist's kindness and pity for those around him, not only for Alyosha and the captain, but also for Fetyukov, who has lost his sense of human dignity, the ability to understand even his guards and guards (forced people) and sympathize with them - all this testifies to the return of Russian literature to eternal humanistic values .

In the person of the quiet and patient Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn recreated an almost symbolic in its generality image of the Russian people, capable of enduring suffering, bullying of the communist regime and criminal lawlessness of the Archipelago and, despite this, withstand this “tenth circle of “hell””, while maintaining kindness towards people, humanity, condescension towards human weaknesses and intransigence towards meanness.

The novelty of the hero Solzhenitsyn, who little corresponded to generally accepted ideas about the “builder of communism,” was not liked by all Soviet critics.
Let’s read the opinion of critic N. Sergovantsev: “The author of the story is trying to present him as an example of spiritual fortitude. And what kind of perseverance is there when the hero’s circle of interests does not extend beyond an extra bowl of “gruel”” (October magazine, 1963).

-Do you agree with this statement? During eight years of hard labor, Ivan Denisovich learned the daily struggle for existence: hide a trowel, snatch a tray from a prisoner by touch, “mow up” a couple of bowls of gruel, learned to store forbidden things: a needle in a hat, a knife in a crack, money in a lining. He also comprehended the wisdom that a prisoner, in order to survive, must leave his pride: “...groan and rot. But if you resist, you will break.” But with all this, Shukhov did not lose the main thing - his sense of human dignity. He knows for sure that you can’t grovel for rations and a sip of tobacco smoke. “He was not a jackal even after eight years of hard labor - and the further he went, the more firmly he became established.”

The strength of Solzhenitsyn’s hero lies in the fact that despite all the inevitable moral losses for a prisoner, he managed to preserve a living soul. Such moral categories as conscience, human dignity, decency determine his life behavior. Ivan Denisovich did not succumb to the process of dehumanization even in the camps; he remained a man. Thus, the story about the Soviet camps grows to the scale of a story about the eternal power of the human spirit.

Spiritual foundations of confrontation

- What saves Shukhov? What, according to Solzhenitsyn, keeps a person in the camp?

In penal servitude it is difficult to preserve life, but it is even more difficult to preserve “the living soul.” In “The Gulag Archipelago,” Solzhenitsyn devotes a separate chapter, “The Soul and Barbed Wire,” to the problem of the moral choice of everyone caught behind barbed wire. The writer moves us from the political plane to the spiritual: “It’s not the result that is important... but the SPIRIT!”

In the camp, a person faces a great choice; if he chooses life “at any cost,” then as a result he loses his conscience: “This is the great fork in camp life. From here roads will go to the right and left; one will gain heights, the other will decrease. If you go to the right, you will lose your life; if you go to the left, you will lose your conscience.” A person who decides to survive at any cost inevitably becomes mean: he becomes an informer, a beggar, a dish-licker, a voluntary overseer. And we see many such examples in Solzhenitsyn’s story: the foreman Der, the jackal Fetyukov, the informer Panteleev. Another path leads to moral ascent and inner freedom: “Having ceased to be afraid of threats and not chasing rewards, you have become the most dangerous type in the owl eyes of your masters. For what will we take you with?”

- Give examples of such living souls, not broken by inhumane conditions. Find and read the description of the Yu-81 camp. What does this portrait indicate?

This is the righteous Alyoshka the Baptist, blessing the prison, and the wiry old man X-123, in a dispute with Caesar, expressing the author’s own views on art: “Geniuses do not adjust the interpretation to the taste of tyrants,” “No, to hell with your “how,” if it doesn’t awaken good feelings in me,” and camp prisoner Yu-81. “They told Shukhov about this old man that he was in camps and in prisons countless times, how much Soviet power costs, and not a single amnesty touched him, and as soon as one ten ended, they shoved a new one on him.”

Among the souls who were not broken by the inhuman conditions of the camp, of course, is the main character, who in his own way managed to adapt to life in a special camp. Therefore, the story about a prisoner who “could not admit himself” and “the further he went, the more he asserted himself,” acquires a comprehensive meaning. In a country where everything is aimed at corrupting souls, preserving a “living soul” is a high feat! The writer believes in the unlimited spiritual powers of man, in his ability to withstand the threat of brutality.

Features of the writer's language style

- What impression did Solzhenitsyn’s language make on you? Give examples of argotisms and colloquial vocabulary. Is their use justified?

The depiction of a new, unprecedented reality requires new linguistic means. For many years, Solzhenitsyn, a deep admirer of Vladimir Dahl, who carefully kept one of the volumes of his “Dictionary” throughout his camp years, created his own “Dictionary of Language Expansion”, searched through language for ways to bridge the gap between book and colloquial language, wanted through the spirit of language to better understand folk characters. The Russian language in Solzhenitsyn’s prose often appears in movement from bookish to colloquial. The writer, in the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” creates his own dictionary of linguistic expansion, reveals the connotation of the word by deforming it, cutting it, shortening it, and endowing the root base of the word with unexpected prefixes and suffixes.

- Give examples of such words created by the writer.

“Unsmoked”, “scraped”, “unsupportive”, “arrogantly”, “worn out”, “attentive”, “without spilling”, “get used to”, “have seen”, “shyly”, “satisfied”, etc.

- Who is telling the story about one day of Ivan Denisovich? Is the author's speech similar to the hero's speech?

Wanting to recreate the hero’s inner world, his inner speech, through which a certain manner of thinking is visible, Solzhenitsyn uses a special form of narration - the so-called improperly direct speech. This is a narration from the perspective of a neutral narrator, but presented entirely in the speech style of the hero. Every feeling, look, assessment, the whole world is conveyed through the perception of the former collective farmer, and now a prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov: “Only taking care of them - on someone else’s blood... went away a little... where will you get caught... just take it without spilling!.. it separates the whole body... people have changed..."

Results

- Let's formulate conclusions about the significance of Solzhenitsyn's story in the history of Russian literature.

1. Solzhenitsyn was Columbus, who paved the way to the unknown islands of the Archipelago, who discovered and described the unknown nation of prisoners.
Following the works of Solzhenitsyn, “Kolyma Tales” by V. Shalamov, “Plunge into Darkness” by O. Volkov, “Faithful Ruslan” by G. Vladimov and other works on this topic appeared.

2. The writer discovered the “simple Soviet man”, created an almost symbolic in its generality image of the Russian people, capable of enduring unprecedented suffering and preserving a living soul.

3. Solzhenitsyn's story marked a turn towards traditional moral values ​​forgotten by Soviet literature. “A. Solzhenitsyn’s talent and courage were manifested in the fact that he began to speak in the voice of great literature, the main difference of which from insignificant literature is that it is occupied with the categories of good and evil, life and death, the relationship between man and society, power and personality.”(A.Belinkov).

4. Solzhenitsyn gave a lesson in courage and courage to all Soviet writers. “He proved that it is possible and should write without thinking about either the internal or external censor”(V. Kaverin). “It is no longer possible to write the way they wrote recently”(G. Baklanov). “When Solzhenitsyn appeared and saved the honor of Russian literature, his appearance was like a miracle.”(A. Yakobson).

5. For the first time in Soviet literature, criticism of the entire system and “advanced ideology” was voiced. “Solzhenitsyn opened our eyes, tightly sewn up with ideology, insensitive to terror and lies”(Zh. Niva).

6. The story revealed the writer’s spiritual confrontation, a return to the religious foundations of his worldview. “This was a turning point not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in the history of the spiritual development of each of us”(M. Schneerson).

7. Solzhenitsyn was an innovator in the field of language. “The event was language itself; they plunged into it headlong... It was that same great and powerful, and, moreover, free language, intelligible from childhood... The Russian language struck with force, like a key, from the first lines - playing and almost physically palpably quenching your thirst.”(M. Chudakova).

Notes

Lakshin V.Ya. Friends and enemies of Ivan Denisovich // Lakshin V.Ya. Magazine paths. M., 1990. P. 73.

Chudakova M.O. Through the stars to the thorns // Chudakova M.O. Literature of the Soviet past. M., 2001. S. 340, 365.

Literature

1. Lakshin V.Ya. Friends and foes of Ivan Denisovich // Lakshin V.Ya. Magazine paths. M., 1990.

2.Leiderman N., Lipovetsky M. Between chaos and space // “New World”. 1991. No. 7.

3. Niva J. Solzhenitsyn. M., 1992.

4. Chudakova M.O. Through the stars to the thorns: Change of literary cycles // Chudakova M.O. Literature of the Soviet past. M., 2001.

5.Schneerson M. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Sowing, 1984.

Features of the genre of one of the works of Russian literature of the 20th century.

This book has a special destiny. It was conceived by the author in the camp where he, accused of anti-Soviet activities, was serving time. It was here that the idea came to him to tell the details of one day in the life of a prisoner. The book was written very quickly, in a month, and published a few years later, in 1961, in the magazine "New World", headed in those years by A. Tvardovsky.

The writer became known throughout the reading country: people lined up at the library to get an issue of the magazine with the story, retyped it on a typewriter, and passed it from hand to hand. The book became a revelation for many - for the first time the undisguised truth was told about camp life. With this story by Solzhenitsyn, not only his literary fame began, but also a new layer of Soviet literature was discovered - the camp story and the camp story.

The action of the story fits into one winter day, starting with a rail strike at five in the morning and ending late in the evening.

The scene is one of the many post-war camps.

The main character of the story, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, came here, like most prisoners, by an absurd, at first glance, accident. He went to the front in the first days of the war, leaving behind his home, family, and years of honest work on the collective farm. In 1942, the unit in which Shukhov fought, like the entire army fighting on the North-Western Front, was surrounded. The people, left without fire support and provisions, wandered for several days in the forests, “going so far as to cut off the hooves of dead horses, soak that cornea in water and eat it.”

Without excessive emotionality, with meager detail, Solzhenitsyn, who himself walked the roads of war, shows what the soldiers had to endure when they found themselves in unforeseen circumstances prepared for them by the war.

Shukhov and his fellow soldiers spent several days in German captivity, escaped from there and reached their own, however, this seemingly happy turn of fate was not without tragedies: “... his submachine gunner killed two on the spot, the third died from his wound, - two of them got there." Delighted to return to their own people, the people did not even think of hiding the truth during interrogation in a special department, saying that they had been in German captivity.

Here the ordinary fate of the private, former peasant Shukhov ends, and his camp biography begins - in the special department they did not believe the stories of the survivors, they recognized them as German agents carrying out a secret mission on the territory of the Soviet Union. But neither the special investigator nor Shukhov, who had been beaten many times in counterintelligence, could come up with exactly what kind of task, “they just left it as a task.”

Ivan Denisovich, who agreed with the reservation, decided for himself this way: “If you don’t sign, it’s a wooden pea coat; if you sign, you’ll at least live a little longer. I signed.”

Already in this episode one of Shukhov’s main qualities is manifested - humility in the face of circumstances. Unlike the heroes of romantic literature, who boldly challenged mortal danger and fate itself, A.I. Solzhenitsyn does not make his Ivan Denisovich a hero in the usual sense for literature. On the contrary, a peasant rational principle is always present in his actions; Shukhov accepts the rules of the game and does not try to defend his rights in a powerless environment. He is a believer, but the fire of self-sacrifice is not for him - Ivan Denisovich tenaciously clings to life. Sometimes he does not hesitate to curry favor with his superiors, being helpful to prisoners. But Shukhov is not a “jackal”, like, for example, Fetyukov, who is constantly looking for where to grab his piece, and is ready to lick other people’s bowls out of hunger.

The earthly circle of joys of Ivan Denisovich resembles the “round nature” of Tolstoy’s Platon Karataev: the same unpretentiousness of desires, the same firm knowledge of one’s place in life, the same ability to find the joy of being in the most cruel alteration. So, summing up the mental outcome of his day, Shukhov was pleased with him: “... he wasn’t put in a punishment cell, he wasn’t kicked out to Sotsgorodok, he made porridge at lunch,... he didn’t get caught with a hacksaw on a search... And he didn’t get sick, he overcame.”

The author does not directly evaluate his hero, although he clearly has sympathy for him, and his absorption in the circle of everyday, “low” concerns is the best opposition, from Solzhenitsyn’s point of view, to the inhumane system. This is the national type that will withstand any challenge, and in essence the story is a monument to the healthy roots and indestructibility of the Russian national character.

Work is very important for Shukhov. He is not so simple that he treats every work indiscriminately. Work, argues Ivan Denisovich, “is like a stick, it has two ends: if you do it for people, give it quality; if you do it for a fool, give it show.” And yet, Shukhov loves to work. This is where an interesting paradox appears, a connection with the general idea of ​​the story.

When the picture of forced labor seems to float into the picture of free labor, of one’s own volition, it makes one understand more deeply and sharply what people like Ivan Denisovich are worth, and what a criminal absurdity it is to keep them away from their home, under the guard of machine gunners, behind barbed wire. .

Shukhov's character is compared with the characters of other prisoners - the system of images of the story is built on this.

It is noteworthy that, with the exception of the main character, they are based on the fates of specific people whom Solzhenitsyn met in the camp. In general, documentary is a distinctive feature of almost all of the writer’s works. He seems to trust Life and its Creator more than artistic fiction.

After Shukhov, the brigade is the second main character of Solzhenitsyn's story. She is like something motley, heterogeneous, but at the same time “like a big family. She is a family, a team.” The brigade is one of the most brilliant inventions of the Stalinist regime in its simplicity. It is impossible to think of a more effective means of mutual destruction of prisoners. Here they help each other, but no one covers for anyone, because if something happens, the blame falls on the entire team. The guilty prisoner is condemned not only by the guards, but also by the prisoners themselves. I didn’t have time for the check - I let down (and therefore angered) the entire brigade, or even the entire camp. That is why mutual surveillance and “informing” were so widespread within the brigade. But despite this, relations in Shukhov’s brigade were quite united.

A variety of people work in the same team with Shukhov. This is kavtorang (captain of the second rank) Buinovsky, who recently arrived in the camp and does not yet know its laws. Behind him is the same as Shukhov’s accusation of espionage, and before that - service on destroyers, awards and wounds. An educated and proud man, Buinovsky is trying to preserve his rights as a human being, and to instill in the prisoners, his fellow sufferers, the idea of ​​opposing everyday humiliation and lack of rights.

This is the Moscow film director Tsezar Markovich, who has been serving time for a long time and has already acquired connections here: he does not strain himself at the work common to the brigade, and receives food separately from the rest. Caesar is a representative of the class of the so-called Soviet intelligentsia, standing out sharply from the crowd of other prisoners primarily due to his education and conversations about art that are incomprehensible to many people around him. The figure of this camp inmate is shrouded in some mystery, and it is not completely clear to the reader who he really is and how he ended up in the camp.

Brigadier Tyurin is presented in the story in the image of an “ideal foreman”. He manages to keep track of everything, makes responsible decisions, protects his team and even manages to tell them stories from his life.

The author treats almost all the heroes from Shukhov's brigade with obvious sympathy, with the exception of Fetyukov - the only absolutely negative hero of the story. And behind this lies Solzhenitsyn’s positive attitude towards political prisoners, and towards all those unjustly convicted during Stalin’s repressions. Peasants, soldiers, intellectuals, they think differently and talk about different things. The only thing that many of them have in common is the fictitiousness and absurdity of the charges brought against them, and the main character of the story, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, is no exception.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn created a truly popular character, so close to millions that we can talk about the popular role of this hero. Through the suffering of one person, the suffering of a people is comprehended. But the people suffered in silence, and Solzhenitsyn took it upon himself to openly declare the government’s crime against the people. People learned the truth, the truth about themselves - this is the main merit of the story. Solzhenitsyn's initiative - his discovery of the genre of camp prose - soon had followers: Yu. Dombrovsky ("Faculty of Unnecessary Things"), E. Ginzburg ("Steep Route"), V. Shalamov ("Kolyma Tales"). The veil of silence was broken, the truth became public property, and the harsh reality of life was revealed. Readers no longer needed sweet tales about a bright future.

Concluding his Nobel lecture, A.I. Solzhenitsyn uttered prophetic words reflecting his position as a humanist writer and fighter for justice. “In the Russian language,” he said, “proverbs about truth are beloved. They persistently express considerable difficult people’s experience and sometimes it is striking: “One word of truth will conquer the whole world.” It is on such an allegedly fantastic violation of the law of conservation of masses and energies that my own activity, and my call to the writers of the world."

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.coolsoch.ru/ http://lib.sportedu.ru

The story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” brought popularity to the writer. The work became the author's first published work. It was published by the New World magazine in 1962. The story described one ordinary day of a camp prisoner under the Stalinist regime.

History of creation

Initially the work was called “Shch-854. One day for one prisoner,” but censorship and a lot of obstacles from publishers and authorities influenced the name change. The main character in the story described was Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

The image of the main character was created based on prototypes. The first was Solzhenitsyn’s friend, who fought with him at the front in the Great Patriotic War, but did not end up in the camp. The second is the writer himself, who knew the fate of camp prisoners. Solzhenitsyn was convicted under Article 58 and spent several years in a camp, working as a mason. The story takes place in the winter month of 1951 in hard labor in Siberia.

The image of Ivan Denisovich stands apart in Russian literature of the 20th century. When there was a change of power, and it became permissible to talk about the Stalinist regime out loud, this character became the personification of a prisoner in a Soviet forced labor camp. The images described in the story were familiar to those who suffered a similar sad experience. The story served as an omen for a major work, which turned out to be the novel “The Gulag Archipelago.”

"One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich"

The story describes the biography of Ivan Denisovich, his appearance and how the daily routine in the camp is drawn up. The man is 40 years old. He is a native of the village of Temgenevo. When he went to war in the summer of 1941, he left his wife and two daughters at home. As fate would have it, the hero ended up in a camp in Siberia and managed to serve eight years. The ninth year is coming to an end, after which he will again be able to lead a free life.

According to the official version, the man received a sentence for treason. It was believed that, having been in German captivity, Ivan Denisovich returned to his homeland on instructions from the Germans. I had to plead guilty to stay alive. Although in reality the situation was different. In the battle, the detachment found itself in a disastrous situation without food and shells. Having made their way to their own, the fighters were greeted as enemies. The soldiers did not believe the story of the fugitives and brought them to trial, which determined hard labor as punishment.

First, Ivan Denisovich ended up in a strict regime camp in Ust-Izhmen, and then he was transferred to Siberia, where restrictions were not so strictly observed. The hero lost half his teeth, grew a beard and shaved his head bald. He was assigned the number Shch-854, and his camp clothes make him a typical little man whose fate is decided by higher authorities and people in power.

During his eight years of imprisonment, the man learned the laws of survival in the camp. His friends and enemies from among the prisoners had equally sad fates. Relationship problems were a key disadvantage of being incarcerated. It was because of them that the authorities had great power over the prisoners.

Ivan Denisovich preferred to show calm, behave with dignity and maintain subordination. A savvy man, he quickly figured out how to ensure his survival and a worthy reputation. He managed to work and rest, planned his day and food correctly, and skillfully found a common language with those with whom he needed it. The characteristics of his skills speak of wisdom inherent in the genetic level. Serfs demonstrated similar qualities. His skills and experience helped him become the best foreman in the team, earning respect and status.

Ivan Denisovich was a full-fledged manager of his destiny. He knew what to do in order to live comfortably, did not disdain work, but did not overwork himself, could outwit the warden and easily avoided sharp corners in dealing with prisoners and with his superiors. Ivan Shukhov's happy day was the day when he was not put in a punishment cell and his brigade was not assigned to Sotsgorodok, when the work was done on time and the rations were stretched out for the day, when he hid a hacksaw and it was not found, and Tsezar Markovich gave him some extra money for tobacco.

Critics compared the image of Shukhov with a hero - a hero from the common people, broken by an insane state system, found himself between the millstones of the camp machine, breaking people, humiliating their spirit and human self-awareness.

Shukhov set himself a bar below which it was unacceptable to fall. Therefore, he takes off his hat when he sits down at the table and neglects the fish eyes in the gruel. This is how he preserves his spirit and does not betray his honor. This elevates a man above the prisoners licking bowls, vegetating in the infirmary and knocking on the boss. Therefore, Shukhov remains a free spirit.

The attitude towards work in the work is described in a special way. The laying of the wall causes an unprecedented stir, and the men, forgetting that they are camp prisoners, put all their efforts into its rapid construction. Industrial novels filled with a similar message supported the spirit of socialist realism, but in Solzhenitsyn’s story it is rather an allegory for The Divine Comedy.

A person will not lose himself if he has a goal, so the construction of a thermal power plant becomes symbolic. Camp existence is interrupted by satisfaction from the work done. The purification brought by the pleasure of fruitful work even allows you to forget about the disease.

The specificity of the image of Ivan Denisovich speaks of the return of literature to the idea of ​​populism. The story raises the topic of suffering in the name of the Lord in a conversation with Alyosha. The convict Matryona also supports this theme. God and imprisonment do not fit into the usual system of measuring faith, but the dispute sounds like a paraphrase of the Karamazovs’ discussion.

Productions and film adaptations

The first public visualization of Solzhenitsyn's story took place in 1963. The British channel NBC released a teleplay starring Jason Rabards Jr. Finnish director Caspar Reed shot the film “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in 1970, inviting artist Tom Courtenay to collaborate.

The story is in little demand for film adaptation, but in the 2000s it found a second life on the theater stage. A deep analysis of the work carried out by the directors proved that the story has great dramatic potential, describes the country's past, which should not be forgotten, and emphasizes the importance of eternal values.

In 2003, Andriy Zholdak staged a play based on the story at the Kharkov Drama Theater. Solzhenitsyn did not like the production.

Actor Alexander Filippenko created a one-man show in collaboration with theater artist David Borovsky in 2006. In 2009, at the Perm Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, Georgy Isaakyan staged an opera based on the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” to music by Tchaikovsky. In 2013, the Arkhangelsk Drama Theater presented a production by Alexander Gorban.

The idea for the story came to the writer’s mind when he was serving time in the Ekibastuz concentration camp. Shukhov, the main character of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, is a collective image. He embodies the traits of the prisoners who were with the writer in the camp. This is the first work of the author to be published, which brought Solzhenitsyn worldwide fame. In his narrative, which has a realistic direction, the writer touches on the topic of the relationship between people deprived of freedom, their understanding of honor and dignity in inhuman conditions of survival.

Characteristics of the characters “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”

Main characters

Minor characters

This was an incomplete description of the heroes of the story, the list of which in the work “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” itself is much longer. This table of characteristics can be used to answer questions in literature lessons.

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