One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Cliffs Notes)

Rating:
Summary: In regard to previous review....
Review: Cliff Notes is not intended to be used as a substitute for reading a work. It is an AIDE to help a reader better grasp the ideas. If you're smart enough to be reading works like this, maybe you would've been smart enough to know this. Or maybe you're some smartass kid.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but can't hold a candle to Solhenitsyn's other works.
Review: None of the usual character depth that usually definines Solhenitsyn. All in all, worth the read, much better if you have some knowledge in Russian history.

Rating:
Summary: Understanding Solzhenitsyn's novel of life in the Gulag
Review: This review is of the Cliffs Notes on "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," and not Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel on life in the Soviet Gulag. The introductory material covers the life and background of Solzhenitsyn (giving you a sense for how autobiographical the novel happens to be), a description of the Gulag System under Josef Stalin, the fourteen subsection of Article 58 (worth an entire class discussion), as well as a brief synopsis of the novel and a list of characters. Particularly useful is the section where Blaha covers the preface to the original edition by Alexander Tvardovsky, the editor-in-chief of the influential literary magazine "Novy Mir," who had submitted the novel for publication directly to Premier Nikita Khrushchev. This section puts Solzhenitsyn's novel in the context of Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization" policy and will give teachers and students alike a sense for the time and place in which "One Day" was published. In the Critical Commentaries section, Blaha breaks "One Day" down into discrete scenes, which may well require you to match up the commentaries with the specific page numbers in the copy of the novel you are using. However, be warned that Blaha devotes most of this section to commentary rather than summary; unlike most Cliffs Notes, he does not distinguish between the two. Again, this is why reading the commentaries after actually reading the book is the way to go. This volume ends with critical essays on the levels of meaning in the novel (prison novel, social commentary, existential commentary), and a section on style and narrative perspective. The strength of the Cliffs Notes on "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is what it provides in terms of background on the novel. As far as novels go, this a relatively short one, but it is richly detailed; I remember being stunned at the end when I remembered this was just a single day in the life of a prisoner of the Gulag.

Rating:
Summary: Understanding Solzhenitsyn's novel of life in the Gulag
Review: This review is of the Cliffs Notes on "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," and not Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel on life in the Soviet Gulag. The introductory material covers the life and background of Solzhenitsyn (giving you a sense for how autobiographical the novel happens to be), a description of the Gulag System under Josef Stalin, the fourteen subsection of Article 58 (worth an entire class discussion), as well as a brief synopsis of the novel and a list of characters. Particularly useful is the section where Blaha covers the preface to the original edition by Alexander Tvardovsky, the editor-in-chief of the influential literary magazine "Novy Mir," who had submitted the novel for publication directly to Premier Nikita Khrushchev. This section puts Solzhenitsyn's novel in the context of Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization" policy and will give teachers and students alike a sense for the time and place in which "One Day" was published. In the Critical Commentaries section, Blaha breaks "One Day" down into discrete scenes, which may well require you to match up the commentaries with the specific page numbers in the copy of the novel you are using. However, be warned that Blaha devotes most of this section to commentary rather than summary; unlike most Cliffs Notes, he does not distinguish between the two. Again, this is why reading the commentaries after actually reading the book is the way to go. This volume ends with critical essays on the levels of meaning in the novel (prison novel, social commentary, existential commentary), and a section on style and narrative perspective. The strength of the Cliffs Notes on "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is what it provides in terms of background on the novel. As far as novels go, this a relatively short one, but it is richly detailed; I remember being stunned at the end when I remembered this was just a single day in the life of a prisoner of the Gulag.