Use Of Allegory In 'One Day In The Life Of Ivan Desinovich'?

One day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich by Alex Solzhenitsyn, published in 1962 describes the Gulag as a prison used by the Soviet government under Stalin to dehumanize it’s prisoners. Despite being in the Gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn manages to survive these experiences and describes them through the use of Ivan and his fellow protagonists. Solzhenitsyn explores this topic by employing vivid imagery while appealing to the Russian people with his symbolism and allegories. The combination of themes and motifs communicate to the Russian people how a few prisoners managed to survive in such a prison that was meant to take away their humanity and transform them into mindless slaves.

The author used the theme of the struggle for human dignity,

Soviet officials treated the inmates of the Gulag in an unjust manner to show the inmates that they belonged to the Soviet government , that they were not people, but simply tools used by the Soviet government to help its economy. The Gulag punished the prisoners in an unjust manner by taking away their privacy to the point that they could trust one another with their own thoughts as snitches were a pestilence that the Soviet officials used to extract information about the prisoners to spy on them.

This mirrors the outside state under Stalin. It is part of the pattern of the allegorical novel.

A theme that is connected with the topic is the importance of faith in the novel. Alyoshka, one of the main characters in the novel, manages to maintain his dignity through keeping his faith, in addition he advises the rest to do the same. As a result Shukov follows Alyoshka’s advice and puts his spiritual desires in front of the flesh and achieves inner peace. Evidence that characters managed to maintain their dignity can be found through the author’s use of allegory. The novel is an allegory itself, as on the surface it is one day in the life of a prisoner, but in reality it is meant to be a call to the Soviet

The cold is the materialization of the coldness which is provided by Nature, the managers of the Gulag use it to treat the prisoners. This is an addition to the strip body searches that frequently occur daily in these tempratures, and to the fact that the prisoners already have to wear sweaty prison rags, which degrades them into something less than human, even when it is summer time. Although in the Siberian Winter, the coldness makes these conditions more sufferable as a part of the prisoners prison sentence. The column went [...] out onto the open steppe, walking into the wind and the reddening sunrise. Not so much as a sapling to be seen out on the steppe, nothing but bare white snow to the left or right. (Solzhenitsyn 221 Shokov has to concentrate on more than avoiding punishmentat the hands of the prison guards of the camps harshely enforced regulations, but he has to protect himself from nature's cold. Slozhenytsin puts constant emphasis that reminds us the Shukov is a enemy of nature in the camp,. No one considers escaping from the camp because of the nature outside, which would cause a quick death. The combination of the conditions of the camp and nature creates the sense that the entire world is against Shokov. The world is inhospitable, and yet it is the fate of humans to carry on, one day at a time. Another motif is The prisoners’ lives show how the Soviet regime makes private