Machines are everywhere. They take up every aspect of our lives: our waking up, our getting to school/work, and even at school/work. But when mankind’s machines are used for ill, the results could mean the death of us. Nuclear ICBMs pose a constant threat; just one of their 250 warheads can level cities with a single, grand explosion, and one warhead can contaminate 250 miles of air and land, making it inhospitable for thousands of years. In Metro: 2033, the worst scenario has been realized: the 2013 nuclear war has annihilated most of humanity, and the few thousand people living in the Moscow Metro (Московское метро) are struggling to survive mutant attacks, believing again in ancient superstitions and fears, warring over such things as religion, ideology, and race, and all the time facing hopelessness and depression as they recall an Earth from twenty years prior, a world of skyscrapers and travel and sunny, carefree days. Dmitry Glukhovsky’s adult post-apocalyptic novel, first published in Russia in 2005 by Orionbooks, is very similar to Ann Aguirre’s Enclave, which also takes humanity underground after a nuclear/biological war. Metro: 2033 is the sad but accurate epitome of humanity after the nuclear holocaust, a world of superstition and rumor and hopelessness and death.
Metro: 2033 is alarming in its detailed and realistic portrayal of human life after civilization’s death. The main character, Artyom, is living in the Moscow Metro beneath the ruined city. Thanks to Soviet planning, most stations have blast doors as well as air and water filters, meaning that the real life stations could actually survive a near-by nuclear attack, which happens in Metro: 2033. Artyom was a baby when the nuclear missiles struc...
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...nd these two fight the entire time. Glukhovsky’s book is full of grey areas, of vague details that may or may not ever become clear. There are many types of mutated threats, with only one goal: “Survive. Survive at any cost.” (Glukhovsky 9). His novel managed to enthrall readers in a complex universe full of ideas and monstrosities.
This book is very detailed and accurate, and as a result is highly popular and successful. Artyom’s odyssey through both a future and backward people is very intriguing, and the time Glukhovsky put into detailing every aspect of life was well spent. Many different theological and political ideas are brought up and discussed, as well as superstitions and rumors, and the concepts as a whole were very thought-provoking and really got the reader involved.
Works Cited
Glukhovsky, Dmitry. Metro 2033. Moscow: Orion, 2005. Print. Metro.
Imagine working with radioactive materials in a secret camp, and the government not telling you that this material is harmful to your body. In the book Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown, she takes her readers on a journey to expose what happened in the first two cities that started producing plutonium. Brown is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has won a handful of prizes, such as the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the Best Book in International European History, and was also a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. Brown wrote this book by looking through hundreds of archives and interviews with people, the evidence she found brought light to how this important history of the Cold War left a nuclear imprint on the world today.
Modris Eksteins presented a tour-de-force interpretation of the political, social and cultural climate of the early twentieth century. His sources were not merely the more traditional sources of the historian: political, military and economic accounts; rather, he drew from the rich, heady brew of art, music, dance, literature and philosophy as well. Eksteins examined ways in which life influenced, imitated, and even became art. Eksteins argues that life and art, as well as death, became so intermeshed as to be indistinguishable from one another.
The novel is nurtured with a very soft but sophisticated diction. The essay itself portrays the author’s style of sarcasm and explains his points in a very clear manner. In addition, the author has used vocabulary that is very easy to understand and manages to relate the readers with his simplistic words. The author is able to convey a strong and provoc...
The short story, “Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt”, explicates the life of a man named Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka. We see him briefly in his young years, followed by his life in the army, and his return to the farm where his strong characterized aunt resides. We can see immediately that this man lives in constant cleanliness and dutiful paranoia; these are some of his desires that he wishes to exhibit to others. We can also see his fears, which reside in the confiscation of his masculinity and independence. This short story has many elements that resemble others in the Nikolai Gogol collection.
...es Art an inner power struggle. Subsequently, Art becomes resentful. Art’s resentment towards Vladek does not allow him to emotionally mature. Yet through writing Art forgives his father and becomes a man.
Through his uses of descriptive language Hersey exposes to the reader the physical, emotional, Psychological and structural damage caused by a nuclear attack. He shows the reader how peoples are physically changed but also how emotional psychologically scared by this act of horror. Through Hersey’s graphic detail of the horror after the bomb and the effects years after he shock the reader while also give the message that we shouldn’t let this happen again. In the book Hiroshima the author John Hersey exposes that a nuclear attack is not simply a disaster that fades away when the rubble is removed and buildings are rebuilt but an act of horror that changes the course of people’s live.
In describing the setting, the general locale is the prison in the coldest part of Russia- Siberia, geographically but socially depicting the social circumstances in the prison, but draws analogies to the general social, political and economic circumstances of Russia during the Stalinist era (form 1917 revolution up to 1955). The symbolic significance of the novel and the film (genres) reflects experiences, values and attitudes of the Russian society. The genres reflect the origins of the Russian social disorders and massive counts of political misgivings which watered down real communism in Russia. We are constantly reminded of the social and cultural heritage and originality of Russian ethnic groups through those different levels of meanings
Hadji Murat, Tolstoy’s second book with the Caucasus as its setting can be considered a work of historical fiction that is a beautiful tale of resistance, and a window into not only the Caucasian War of the mid-nineteenth century, but also the culture of the Russian Empire during this period. As a work of fiction the reader must be wary of depictions of actual persons such as Tsar Nicholas I, whom Tolstoy was not enamored with, to say the least, but many insights about the period and its people can be gleaned from the story. The novel is one of great contrasts between Chechens and Russians and also of what life was like during this time.
Being one of the greatest Russian writers of 20th century, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had a unique talent that he used to truthfully depict the realities of life of ordinary people living in Soviet era. Unlike many other writers, instead of writing about “bright future of communism”, he chose to write about everyday hardships that common people had to endure in Soviet realm. In “Matryona’s Home”, the story focuses on life of an old peasant woman living in an impoverished collectivized village after World War 2 . In the light of Soviet’s propaganda of creating a new Soviet Nation, the reader can observe that Matryona’s personality and way of life drastically contradicted the desired archetype of New Soviet Man. Like most of the people in her village,
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy shows reader how not to live their everyday life. Of course we have to work day in and day out to provide for our families, but there comes a time when your work life should be put on hold. No life is ever perfect, we must make the best out of what we can accomplish. The Death of Ivan Ilyich teaches us about three themes: the right life, your mental “phony” life versus reality, and the unavoidable death to come.
Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a reminder that books can provide answers to questions we never asked, but yearned to know. For that reason alone, The Death of Ivan Ilyich should be considered a work of art. However, due to the many subtle hints and clues pointing at the underlying Christian nature of the book, it deserves to be added to the list of great modern Christian literature. Works Cited Tolstoy, Leo. A.
Yuri Trifonov chronicled the life of a Soviet conformist named Vadim Aleksandrovich Glebov in his novel, “The House on the Embankment.” Vadim Glebov leads a life in support of the Soviet Union’s tyranny and oppression of human rights in order to gain the high social status and power he envied beginning in childhood. The novel is a narrative that revolves around Glebov’s education and success, and it depicts what life was like as a Soviet citizen between the 1930’s and 1970’s. Through Glebov’s revealed repressed memories, we see the ultimate example of conformity.
To many individuals the word “progress” has a positive meaning behind it. It suggests improvement, something humans have been obsessed with since the dawn of society. However, if closely examined, progress can also have a negative connotation as well. While bringing improvement, progress can simultaneously spark conformity, dependency, and the obsession of perfection within the individuals caught in its midst. It is this aspect of progress within modern society that negatively affects Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy’s main character in The Death of Ivan Ilych. Ivan’s attempt to conform to modern society’s view of perfection takes away his life long before he dies. Furthermore, his fear of death and reactions towards it reflects modern society’s inability to cope with the ever present reminder that humans still suffer and die, despite all attempts to make life painless, perfect, and immortal.
“The Slynx”, the first novel of Tatyana Tolstaya, had been under process of writing for nearly 14 years and was finally released in 2000. Tatyana Tolstaya is a Russian author, who began her writing career in mid-1980s as a publisher of short stories in various literary magazines. In 1986 she started working on “The Slynx”, a.k.a. “Кысь”. This novel is an intentional example of writing during the censorship period. Therefore, it is largely inter-textual, ironical and, most importantly, Aesopian. The plot is based in “the town of Fyodor-Kumichsk” (Tolstaya 10), which is in fact, the city of Moscow, 200 years after a mysterious and apocalyptic catastrophe – the Blast. The society, however, is not advanced at all, it reminds more of the medieval communities full of exclusion, inequality, tyranny and illiteracy.
Through themes involving hyper-consciousness, calling into question free will, and suffering in isolation, Dostoevsky’s “Underground Man” serves as a character who exemplifies everything Dostoevsky believes is wrong with the belief in a Russian society perfected by laws, mathematics and science. The tragic ending of The Idiot manifests itself as product of the continual struggle of its characters throughout the book, namely through the downfall of the traditional Russian family, the mockery of Christ-like qualities, and the tensions between good and evil members of society. Both Notes from Underground and The Idiot speak to Dostoevsky’s critique of the rising popularity and prominence of utopianism and socialism ideals in Russian society.