One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Stranger

The novels- One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich and The Stranger both focus on the life of the protagonist. The Stranger, Albert Camus’s first novel, is both a brilliantly skilled story and an illustration of his absurdist world view. In The Stranger, the protagonist Meursault is portrayed as a person who is psychologically detached from the world around him. He lacks sentimental emotions which at times are very important for a person. Such as when his mother died, it is natural for a person to grieve or shed tears but Meursault did not show any concern about his mother’s death. The story revolves around Meursault’s indifference and shows us how he is trying to understand the meaning of the society.

In contrast, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, wrote this novel to show the harsh inhuman behavior in the soviet camp. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is a valiant and hugely contentious novel. This is a work of fiction, but it is also a kind of journalistic novel that informs all about the gulag system. The ‘Gulags’ are the forced labor camps where millions of people are sent for crimes. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was writing about the ‘Gulag System’ under Joseph Stalin, the dictator who ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1952. During Stalin's reign of terror, millions of people were killed and millions were arrested and shipped off to gulags. Conditions in the Gulag were appalling and prisoners were used as slave labor. The people who survived the camps were often sent into forced exile afterwards. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had an actual understanding of the ‘Gulag System’. He was detained for writing a deprecating note about Stalin in a letter. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was detained i...

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One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich . (n.d.). Retrieved may 10, 2011, from Bookrags: http://www.bookrags.com/notes/ivan/

One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich . (n.d.). Retrieved may 10, 2011, from Gradesaver: http://www.gradesaver.com/one-day-in-the-life-of-ivan-denisovich/

One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich . (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2011, from Sparknotes: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/denisovich/

One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich . (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2011, from Shmoop: http://www.shmoop.com/ivan-denisovich/

The Stranger. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2011, from Sparknotes : http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/stranger/

The Stranger. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2011, from Gradesaver: http://www.gradesaver.com/the-stranger/

The Stranger. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2011, from Shmoop: http://www.shmoop.com/the-stranger/