Freedom plays a crucial role in the lives of the protagonists in the texts A Dolls House and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

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English A1 World Literature Assignment

 

An exploration on the theme of freedom through the motifs of imprisonment depicted by Henrik Ibsen in ‘A Doll’s House’ and by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’.

 

 

Freedom means different things for different people and imprisonment is one of the constraints upon one’s freedom. Freedom plays a crucial role in the lives of the protagonists in the texts ‘A Doll’s House’ and ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’. Protagonists of both the texts are imprisoned, albeit that the geographic locations of their prison, the nature of their imprisonment and timeframes are different. In ‘A Doll’s House’, Ibsen’s protagonist, Nora, a woman of the Victorian period is an example of a typical Norwegian woman who lives in her home with her husband and three children, but is a prisoner of her society and her husband, but she gains significant increase in freedom during the play. In ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, Solzhenitsyn uses traditional Russian narrative form, the skaz, who has been imprisoned in a camp in the Soviet gulag system, accused of becoming a spy and captured as a prisoner of war during World War II. In this essay, I will explore the different meanings of freedom for Nora and Shukhov through different motifs of imprisonment: motifs of language, mind, food and letters.  

 

During the imprisonment of the protagonists, their personality is squashed through the motifs of language used by their oppressors. In ‘A Doll’s House’, Torvald uses derogatory diminutives words like ‘little skylark’ and ‘squirrel’, to address her. Torvald’s paternalism is echoed in his use of sticky flatteries to Nora and his lecturing tone, as if talking to a stubborn child. These diminutive nicknames look harmless and loving, but they show how insignificant he thinks she is. It also signifies her helplessness and her dependence on him. Torvald treats her as a child to show her inexperienced life. Similarly, in ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, camp guards show prisoners’ imprisonment through motifs of abusive and dehumanizing language, where numbers are used instead of names. Prisoners’ freedom, physical and spiritual dignity, is constantly condemned in the camp through the way camp guards address them. Authorities dehumanize them by calling them abusive and animalistic names. For example, Shukhov’s number is ‘S854’ and he is called by abusive language, like, ‘skunk’ and ‘pig’. Prisoners are not free to show their identity as they are called by petty words. The personal identity of both the prisoners is taken away from them emphasising their feeling of imprisonment.

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Both authors use food and the associated rituals of eating as motifs of imprisonment. Macaroons illustrate the prominence of man in the play as he controls his wife by forbidding her to eat them. This is clearly seen in Mr Helmer’s question, ‘Didn’t go nibbling a macaroon…?’ Macaroons here are a symbol of secrecy and lack of freedom in Nora’s home. She craves independence by eating macaroons, but it does not give her absolute freedom as she cannot eat them whenever she wants. Likewise, Solzhenitsyn uses food as a motif of imprisonment to show the hardships of the camp. Food becomes ...

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