One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich Themes

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Many different journeys in life can result in people learning about their true inner being and the truth of others in their life. In fact, the story of a man spending his life contemplating over the guilt from his childhood can have the same common lessons as a story about a man enslaved in a Russian concentration camp. When compared, the two prodigious novels, “5th Business” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” have many common themes which result in the characters learning about their true inner being and the truth about others around them. 5th Business is the story of a man named Dunstan who writes a lettered biography to the headmaster of his school to explain the guilt he faced as a child and how it impacted his entire life leading uptil retirement. On the other hand, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is about the daily routine of a man named Ivan; a prisoner in a Russian concentration camp who is faced with harsh living conditions and daily abuse. Both men have completely different lives but both learn the same truths about themselves and about the people around them. This can be seen in the three main themes of each book; illusion versus reality, rebirth and self realization. We can see the characters learn from the first theme, illusion vs reality, distinctly in the novel “5th Business”. We first see this in the relationship between Leola and Percy. Leola shows Percy she has love for him while in reality she’s in the relationship for Percy’s money. On the other side, Percy acts as if he’s in love with Leola even though she’s unintellegent and unsuitable for him. He’s attracted to her beauty and not her personality causing the relationship to collapse. Secondly, Dunstan comes to realize the way society view... ... middle of paper ... ...jobs (chores). If this is looked at from a psychoanalytic lens we can see the degrading of the prisoners lead them to having lower self esteems and them not having the ability to see their own self worth. FInally the third theme “self realization” becomes a main theme throughout the two novels. The protagonist Dunstan spends his life finding who he really is… Paul follows the same journey and realizes that he is not what he thought he was. He never felt as if he belonged to his town because he was constantly bullied. He travelled the world and eventually found the city and the people he knew he should be around. In comparison we see this theme again in “One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” we see Ivan discovering his inner self and realizing he is a lot more than what the prison guards confined him to think of himself. He had the mentality that he was weak and

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