One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch Literary Techniques Essay

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch Literary Techniques Alexander Solzhenitsyn's style of writing is economical and unornamental. This is particularly true of One Day. This would seemingly cause little difficulty in translating One Day were it not for the great amount of prison jargon contained in the dialogues and discussion of life in the camp. The author's motto might well be, "wie es eigentlich gewesen," or "tell it like it is." In believing as he does in honest realism and not the propaganda slogan of "socialist realism," Solzhenitsyn wishes to render the real-life situations he describes in so many of his writings-but especially in One Day-in real-life language. The author did not have to use any glossaries of prison argot, although the translator must; Solzhenitsyn simply drew on his own 8-years' experience in corrective labor camps. Artistic Use Of Blunt Language Many "unprintable" Russian words turn up in One Day, as it was first published in Novy Mir. Words like khub kren, yebat', govno and der'mo, khui, pizda, etc., would make Beelzebub himself blush, but since they are part of a zek's vocabulary, they appear in the novella. In the half-dozen extant English translations of the work, these words are rendered with the frankness of a Henry Miller novel. In Solzhenitsyn's case, the reader gets the impression that far from wishing to be shocking or sensational, the author has used these obscenities to show how debased humans can become. In any case, most of the smutty language comes out of the mouths of the camp authorities. This undoubtedly is the author's way of illustrating the source of the debasement, debasement not only... ...xample, it is sometimes difficult to know whether he is speaking to us, the readers, or to another character in the dialogue. At this juncture, the author, via the narrator, may step in to wrap up a scene with a comment or observation. In brief, the author has employed a number of techniques to achieve his overall strategy in One Day. Above all, he wants to tell us the truth in the manner in which we are generally acquainted with raw truth: as a blunt, lopsided thing which we have no other choice but to accept. Avoiding as he does ornamentation or lengthy sentences and description (in the Dickensian or Dostoyevskian manner), Solzhenitsyn accomplishes a stoic austerity which somehow suits the equally stark scenes, lean figures, and cleanshaven heads of the zeks etched against the bleak white background of the Siberian camp.