Reading Reflection #2

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Pg. 54-68

On Friday I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and I have to say, I am loving this book! One of the things that makes this book so wonderful to me is that the entire book is a text to world connection. Although it is a fictional story and Ivan Denisovich isn’t real, all of the events in this book were a reality for the author and millions of Russian people around the 1940’s. Alexander Solzhenitsyn actually created Ivan so he could tell the story of his life in the Russian correctional camps. I find in this book Ivan is oddly easy to connect to, not because I have gone through anything remotely close to what he is going through but because, if you look close enough you can understand in a lesser sense what it is he is dealing with. An example of this is on page 54, “He—untied the frozen face-rag from his neck, broke the ice to fold it up,” I know at some point in time we have all gone out on a cold winter day and had our breath freeze our scarf in place. Now if we take that feeling, then add on the fact that Ivan hasn’t had any warmth since winter stared no matter what he did, then add his empty stomach, and working outside in this bitter cold, we can start to really understand Ivan and connect with him nicely. In a camp like this everyone is desperate, desperate for good food, for sleep, for a little warmth, any many of them are desperate for a cigarette. “That scavenger Fetyukov had scrounged together quite a pile of cigarette butts from somewhere (he would even pick them up out of a spittoon without batting an eye),” (pg. 56) It is terrible when people become that desperate but it is described so perfectly! I also love the way the author used the word scrounged. It gives you the idea that Ivan is a little bitter about Fetyukov getting all of those butts and having a cigarette without actually telling you that he is bitter. Because the author lived this book he gives you this fascinating insight into the  mind of these prisoners. I never considered the different ways a mind would work for someone locked up like this. Page 58 really got me thinking about this. There is a paragraph about how much of a blessing a snow storm is and then it says “Come to think about it, snow storms weren’t much use.” They tell you one view and then totally flip and make you think the opposite. If you don’t want to read this book I would strongly recommend at least reading page 58. It gives you a new way of seeing so many things.