One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich Sparknotes

The book I chose was “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” a fictional story about a man in a Stalinist labor camp in Siberia in 1951. This story shows what it was like to be in a labor camp in during Stalin’s rule of the Soviet Union. The story begins with the main character, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov (usually called just Shukhov) in the morning. It is explained that Shukhov usually wakes up early so he would have time to do little jobs like sewing, sweeping and others before work parade but that day was different. After this is stated, the reader finds out that Shukhov is sick and he has an ache. Just as he decides that he should go to sick bay, Shukhov is taken to HQ. This comes as a surprise to Shukhov and he is worried that he would get thrown into “the hole” (a stone punishment cell at the camp). After arriving at HQ, Shukhov is relieved to find that he wasn’t being sent to the hole, he just had to wash the floors. After he finishes, Shukhov heads off to the mess hall where we meet others from his troop. After breakfast, he heads off to sick bay to be examined but his fever isn’t high enough to go to work so he heads back to the hut where most were napping until work parade. Shukhov hides some of his 550 gram bread ration from breakfast in his mattress and everyone is sent off to work parade. Before work parade, the inmates had to go through a thorough body search, being forced to take off their coats and undershirts even in -27.5 degrees Celsius …show more content…
I found this book be insightful and touching in many ways. This book was insightful because it clearly showed the hardships within labor camps, but it also showed the thoughts of the prisoners and how they managed to get through these camps. I think that this book is also touching because of some of the ways in which the prisoners interact with each