Essay Comparing Night And One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

Authors Elie Wiesel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn write about eerily similar topics in their respective works, Night and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. They both focus around the suffering and inhumanity of their situations, and use their works to raise awareness to those who had either previously been uneducated or just uninformed on the issues, and were instrumental to future conversations regarding such travesties. If one looks at the major topics/themes of these writings, they will see a clear statement about suffering, through the use of motifs such as dehumanization, the loss of hope, and food. Through the author’s description of these themes, it really gave readers a sense of the hell that they had to live through.
“Let them know

that men died here, not pigs.” “So we were men after all?” This quote is an introduction to one of the largest of the themes to throughout both stories – dehumanization. In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the main character, Shukrov, is thrown into a Stalinist prison camp for 10 years for a crime that he didn’t commit, but unfortunately he could not even contest it or he would be persecuted for more time. Inside the camp, the prisoners have to endure conditions that were almost unlivable for humans. Camp guards ruined the individuality of the prisoners by replacing their real names with identifying letter combinations and numbers. For example, Shukhov is referred to as “Shcha-854”, and “S 854” is painted on his jacket. The camp guards rid of the prisoners names in order to dehumanize them to a point where they basically have no identity besides the one that they try to keep to themselves. They also try and dehumanize the prisoners in other ways. Some of the ways include lining up the prisoners and herding them like animals, and made them take all of their clothes off in order to do full body searches in temperature as low as -17’ Celsius. However, the prisoners were not entirely controlled. "Here, men, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. The ones that don't make it are those who lick other men's leftovers, those who count on the doctors to pull them through, and those who squeal on their buddies." This quote is right at the beginning of the story, and is used to introduce the mindset of the prisoners and how they tried to stay individualized.

They would try and not succumb to the pressures of clamoring at the unfinished meals of another person, for that would have stripped them of all of their dignity and forced them to have been at the level of some sort of animal ravaging for food. Shukrov would never let this happen, and throughout the story shows this need to save his individuality. Unfortunately though, his fellow prisoner’s arrogance paves the way for the guards to repeatedly dehumanize not only their lives but their minds as well. However, even with all that is happening, all of the inmates are able to come together and unite to protect common sources of their manners and heritage. Shukrov plays into this hard, talking about the conscious decision made to have almost all prisoners unite in removing their caps while they ate, even though the temperatures were still frigid. It was a source of commonality for all the inmates, and for those that did not abide by that custom, Shukrov told the reader that those were the prisoners most likely to lick off the bowl,

and would surely not survive. To Shukrov, it seemed that the only way to survive the prison camp was to be in constant reminder of the person they may have used to be, and that it was the little things that mattered the most. In Night by Elie Wiesel, the dehumanization was much more rampant and much more blatantly obvious. "One day when Idek was venting his fury, I happened to cross his path. He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood. As I bit my lips in order not to howl with pain, he must have mistaken my silence for defiance and so he continued to hit me harder and harder." Beatings were only the tip of the iceberg for the amount of dehumanization in the story. They were subjected to beatings, whippings, public hangings and executions (even of children!), irregular meals that would not even come close to the daily caloric necessity, and the use of numbers to describe each person. Every prisoner was tattooed with a number upon arrival, which forcibly then made it a part of the person, completely taking away their one and only name and adding a new one with no intrinsic meaning. Just another number in a sea of numbers. There were many similar differences between One Day and Night. A good example of what that means is within this quote said by Wiesel; “The snow began to form a thick layer over our blankets. They brought us bread – the usual ration. We threw ourselves upon it. Someone had the idea of appeasing his thirst by eating the snow off his neighbor’s back. We took a mouthful of bread and a spoonful of snow. The SS who were watching laughed at the spectacle.” This quote really connects with, yet contradicts the quote used earlier by Solzenitsyn about those who clamor for food. This quote describes the Nazi’s attempt and success at dehumanizing the Jews to become animalistic in their behaviors, and really shows the desperation of these peoples situation. All the guards had to do was toss a couple pieces of bread into the snow, and multiple people literally jump in to get their piece of this. The reason why this situation was so different from the examples given by Solzenitsyn is
because of that desperation. Whether or not the food was tasteful or enough for Shukrov and the rest of the prisoners from the Gulag, they knew what and when they would be getting when it came to food. They got their meals 3 times a day, and didn’t really have to worry about not getting fed, so they could easily say that the scraping for extra food was a sign of weakness. That was not the case for the Jews. They had no idea when their next meal was going to be, nor did they know how much it would be, so it was much more acceptable for them to act the way they did.
Another one of the more impactful motifs was the sense that hope was lost.

This motif was definitely seen more in Night, but was seen in the overall sense of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In One Day, the reader, by the time they are finished, is exhausted and under-stimulated by the story. That’s because it is meant to do that to a reader. It makes sure it captures every single detail of the day, especially the ones that are normally kept out of a story because they pose no incentive to the reader. This is for the purpose of letting the reader try and grasp around the fact that this day is just one in TEN YEARS. Ten years is a long time, and for the readers, they cannot fathom doing this for ten years, every day. The reason this stands for the loss of hope is because it showed the sheer amount of mental suffering that occurred to these prisoners, and would often cause them to lose it and lose themselves. Night takes this on in a much more direct approach. The first of this is the use of Wiesel’s faith throughout the story. Wiesel believes wholeheartedly in an all knowing, all seeing, all loving God. When asked about why he would pray, he would answer by asking those people why they breathed. He even claims that he could not believe in a world in which a God doesn’t exist. However that all changes. Wiesel, at the beginning, was very ignorant and refused to realize the severity of the situation at hand. This just only allows for a heart crushing blow when he does

finally realize what his life had become. He allowed the Nazi’s to completely take over his faith belief. His faith is equally disrupted by the cruelty and selfishness he sees among the prisoners in the camps. He saw that the world was full of cruel, selfish, and evil people, all of which anyone had the ability to partake inn. The world was so unforgiving and miserable that he felt that God either could not have been real, or was not the kind of God that he wanted to worship.
The last majorly influential motif is that of food, or the lack thereof. When it comes to Wiesel’s writing, it is most definitely the lack thereof. Many scenes in the story involve eating and the use of food—whether it be its near nonexistence, its insufficiency, or how it was used as a trick to garnish certain behaviors. In fact, throughout their time there, the Jewish captives started to use food in a way that was somewhat similar to the Germans use of it. And although there were still Jews that would share their food with each other, a lot of the captives refuse to share their portions out of sheer survival, which is something that Wiesel really has a hard time trying to comprehend. Wiesel had grown up in a family structure, in a close neighborhood. He was used to sharing everything, so this every-man-for-himself philosophy was a huge change for him. And, even when the Jews are rescued, they still continue to cherish food. It was like a sign to them, a remembrance of the time that they were deprived of an essential part of survival, and came out the other side. In ODLID, food played a much different role. “But food gulped down is no food at all; it's wasted; it gives you no feeling of fullness." The use of food in Solzenitsyn’s story is all about conservation and sanity. There were so many things that surrounded food and eating. As mentioned before, the prisoners of the Gulag were fed 3 times daily. Being on this schedule was routinely described by Shukov to help him maintain his and the rest of the prisoners sanity. They knew that there was always either a meal or sleep coming up, so they used that to motivate themselves to keep on working. They also used it as an indicator of time, something that would help them keep track of their lives. They also, since food for them was something constant, they had to learn how to control themselves. "You had to eat with all your mind on the food-like now, nibbling the bread bit by bit, working the crumbs up into a paste with your tongue and sucking it into your cheeks." Shukov is describing here how important it was to cherish your food and to make it last within you. While it has been said that food is a constant, it is important to note that it is in no way very adequate. Shukov often talks about having to really pace oneself event though they may have been absolutely starving. If one were to devour their food, it would have no impact on the fullness of their stomach, and would eventually drive them to the point in which they would be licking other bowls, or as we know it, dead.
Suffering is the underlying tone for both Night and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Throughout the use of themes such as the dehumanization of prisoners, the lack of hope that was gained by the prisoners, and the use of food, really helps the two authors create a picture in which a reader can really feel the exhaustion and suffering of these two groups of people. Before both of these works, the general public was fairly unaware of the specific atrocities of both of the events, and these works were able to open up a channel for dialogue against the terrible things that happened, and the possible ways to counteract any similar measures in the future.