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Summary: Prison and harmony ?...!
Review: I found the author's description of the prison life very vivid and rather disturbing, till I came across the following quotes that the author made during his Nobel lectures on literature:"The artist is only given to sense more keenly than others the harmony of the world and all the beauty and savagery of man's contribution to it -- and communicate this poignantly to people. And even in the midst of failure and down at the lowest depths of existance -- in poverty, prison, illness -- the sensation of a stable harmony will never him." Sages and philosphers are sometimes made in the prison: but I am sure the author was gifted at birth with the ability to communicate poignanty to people his experiences, and illuminate them from darkness, and kindle a sensation of harmony in them.
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Summary: Glad you aren't here.
Review: This novel is a testimony to the spirit and strength of ordinary men. After they have been forced to live like animals by being herded about like cattle after they were driven like work-horses from dark to dark, they are packed into their pen refered to as the barracks. It is here that Solzhenitsyn has shown how these mostly innocent men accused and convicted of "serious crimes" remembered who and what they were- they were men with names and lives that they had been ripped away from. It was there that this dehumanization was defied by these men; they bought, sold, ate, drank, laughed, talked, argued, and shared like men in "freedom." That is the optimistic view of the prisoner of the Stalinist camps, which, as Mr. Solzhenitsyn has shared, is a necessity for one to have survived in such a place. Then he tells of the brutal reality of the grueling labor they were forced to reckon with every morning. To face the truth- the truth of what was really happening to them. He tells of the psychological games played daily internally and externally on the prisoner's mind. Solzhenitsyn has given us more than a look at history, but a hope for the future in that such attrocities will not happen again.
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Summary: Great Read Especially For Those Studying Russian History
Review: A must read for students of Russian history, this book appeared in 1962 as one of the products of Kruschev's de-Stalinization program of the 50s and 60s. The book recounts about an 18 hour period in the life of a common inmate of a GULAG camp, condemned like many of his fellow inmates, for an imaginary crime. Solzhenitsyn's style is simple and understated, drawing the reader into a this bizarre world where inmate, guard, and administrator are all prisoners of the Stalin system. By avoiding shrill tones (the characters are far beyond the point of indignation), S subtly presents a microcosm where the struggle for a cigarette or a place in the dinner line takes on a much larger significance. Not for everyone, this book represents one of the first and most powerful rejections of Stalinist Russia that appeared in mainstream Soviet society.
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Summary: A good book with a clear presentation that became boring
Review: This book was pretty good. The author's style is nice and clear; and if you are confused about any terms, the book explains them. The only problem, I felt, was that the book became boring at times. The reason for this was the book covers only one day in the life of a man so there is a large amount of explaining. I did enjoy the presentation and how the book progressed as it followed Ivan, told the story realistically, and was clear. This book is for an audience that enjoys history and can read through a book with a lot of explaining.
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Summary: Gripping Tale of Survival . . .
Review: How little we know of suffering becomes clearly obvious when we're through reading this novel. Digging into frozen ground at 20 degrees below zero and praying to God for the sun to hit mid-sky for lunch was an everyday event for the prisoners of this brutal camp. If one cannot gain insight into the character and feelings of the suffering human through the rich text of this novel, may I suggest a one-way ticket to Siberia?
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Summary: Good content and ideas but slow story line
Review: One Day expresses important themes of optimism that was needed to survive in a concentration camp like Ivan Denosivich does in this book. He does this very well by putting Ivan though a day filled with simplistic activities. However, the book can seem booring at times because of the booring and unimportant events. You think to yourself "do we really need to read this much about him building a brick wall?" Overall, the book had a good purpose and themes but the storyline was a little unexpresive.
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Summary: highly recommended
Review: "slow" and "plodding" were the words i heard used to describe this novel by my classmates, but if you don't believe that the life in a Gulag was monotonous, you've probably got another thing coming. the basic joy of a bowl of warm food, a cigarette or a few seconds of rest were the lasting impressions i got from this novel and they make you think the next time you yell at your computer for being too slow, how it could be if you were born in a country which came as close as any has to being a situation straight out of "1982". an excellent read.
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Summary: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Review: A detailed book involving creativity and lots of describing words about Ivan Denisovich in a Russian prison camp. Ivan Denisovich was put in jail for treason and sentenced to ten years in prison. Through the book it talks about Ivan and what his life is like in cold northern Russia. It is a slow book, that is not very exciting, but has lots of details of how the setting is and has a creative plot.
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Summary: A Penetrating Look Into the Human Condition
Review: Highly recommended reading! Many have hailed Solzhenitsyn as a modern Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev or Gorky, and I fully concur. He, like many of his Russian literary predecessors, is able to penetrate into the inmost workings of the human consciousness. The book does indeed display the atrocities of the Russian labor camps under the rule of Stalin, yet it goes much further than this. Solzhenitsyn elucidates the struggle to make life "normal" even in the midst of utterly inhumane circumstances. He shows how people search for dignity and respect though thrown into the lowliest of situations. So you walk away from this book, not simply with a feeling of disgust at the treatment of people, but with an better understanding of the human condition. You may find yourself asking "How could they have possibly continued in such a state?"; Ah, but they did.
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Summary: Emotional..
Review: This book was very emotional to read, the things people in Russian labor camps had to endure are unimaginable to me. Read this book and find out how much you really take for granted!
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