What Is Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

Have you ever wondered what life in a labor camp was really like? How living in those circumstances would affect you? Your morals? Your character? In his book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn depicts the occurrences of one day of a prisoner's 3,653 day sentence at a Stalinist camp called Camp HQ. Through his writing, Solzhenitsyn is able to bring to life a somewhat ordinary main character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, who is a poor, uneducated man meant to depict the average Russian. The plot follows him throughout his day in the camp, from waking up in the morning with a fever, to his daily work routine, to his final prayer at the end of the day. By following him throughout his daily routine you can see how living in the camp has affected him and how the struggles he has faced there have made him stronger and given him a new sense of identity in a place meant to dehumanize people.

The prisoners’ conditions are nearly intolerable and they are being constantly dehumanized. They are stripped of their identities and their names as a sort of destruction of their individualism. He is forced to find a new way to individualize himself from others and he succeeds in doing so in his own way. Shukhov has a spoon which he made and hides in his boot after using it at mealtime everyday. This makes him feel special since he is the only one who has such a tool and since it is unique to just him. He is also able to escape the dehumanization of the camp through faith and