World Literature Paper I

International Baccalaureate World Literature

IB English A1 HL

World Literature Assignment I: How are the pains in The Assault and the pains of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich expressed in the protagonists?

03/10/2010

Word Count: 1,603

The physical pains of Anton Steenwijk in Harry Mulisch’s novel, The Assault, and the social isolation of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, are motifs used by the authors to highlight the emotional and physical pains experienced by the protagonists in the novels. The pains are tied in with many frequent themes of the novels and are crucial to the development of the protagonist’s characterization.

After the death of Anton’s family in The Assault by the actions of the Nazi soldiers, Anton begins to hold in any memories of emotional pain he experiences in his life, starting with the death of his family in Haarlem, believed to have murdered Fake Ploeg, a Dutch policeman who cooperated with the Nazis. When Anton is separated from his family by the Nazis and is put in the truck, “Anton lay on his side and curled up, his wrists crossed under his chin” (Mulisch, 29). This is the beginning of Anton’s repression of his painful memories. Throughout the book, Anton holds his memory of the assault until it is released as a physical pain. For example, during the attack of a British Spitfire on a German convoy, Anton witnesses the dying Schulz, a German solder who supervised Anton on the convoy. With the earlier memory of his parents’ death, “He pushed the helmet off his head, loosed the scarf, and groped for the shaking hood of the truck as the vomit spouted out of his wide-opened throat” (Mulisch, 48). From holding the emotion from the death of his parents, the physical pain experienced by Anton is expressed in the nausea and vomit.

The next time Anton feeling physical pain is during his brief encounter with Fake Ploeg Jr., the son of Fake Ploeg, Anton experiences a headache from the excitement of meeting the son of the man who cause of the death of his family. In The Assault, the significance of the volcano, a recurring motif throughout the novel, is to express the emotional turmoil of Anton. From the initial burst of the volcano, in this case, the death of his parents, the volcano continually throughout the novel, released pressure to ease the swelling. If the Anton refuses to show emotional pain in his body, the pain is transmitted somewhere else; In this case, the pain is transmitted as a physical pain. In the dialogue between Anton and Fake Jr., the tension grows as both characters discuss the night of the assault. In this scene, “the shattered mirror, the exploding stove, the screaming in the street – with his headache he couldn’t stand it. How senseless, all this! The soot spread through the room, and he knew it would take hours to clean it up” (Mulisch, 93). After Fake flees Anton’s apartment, Anton receives and ignored his physical pain of the headache and forces himself to clean his damaged apartment. In this scene, opposite of Anton, Fake decides to embrace his past and shatters the mirror with the rock he held. This shows that Fake has ready accepted what happened in the past, but Anton decides to suppress his painful memory.

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Similar to pain shown in the Assault, the pain shown in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is to demonstrate the isolationism that Ivan Shukhov experiences while in the Soviet prisoner camp. The pain Shukhov is due to the lack of the basics a human thrives off, meaning the insignificant cot, not enough food, and the missing comfort of his family. With the absence of the warm comfort of humans, the pain Ivan experiences is loneliness. As Ivan wakes up, “he had felt strange the evening before, feverish, with pains all over his body. He hadn’t been able to get warm all through the night…” (Solzhenitsyn, 4). The pain Ivan receives in the prison camp when he is not working on hard labor with the rest of his comrades. Without the comfort of his companions, Shukhov believes he has no connection with the guards or the non-prisoners because they themselves don’t feel the same pain as Shukhov is experiencing. When meeting with the physician Kolya, Ivan responds with Kolya’s ignorance of the pain of the prisoners, “how can you expect a man who’s warm to understand a man who’s cold?” (Solzhenitsyn, 19). The connection between Ivan and the other prisoners are stronger than with the prison guards.

After the discussion with Cor Takes and his part in the night of the assault, suppressing the terrible memories of that night, Anton decides to take his wife and daughter Sandra to the beach. While on the beach, Anton obtains a sunburn while napping on the beach. The sunburn indicates that the suppression of the memories Anton is holding back and it is a sign that holding in his memories were getting worse. “Only now did the deep sunburn on his face and the front of his legs begin to show…He had awakened with a splitting headache” (Mulisch, 128). In the result of the sunburn, Anton receives a headache. As time progresses with Anton, the physical pains Anton feels hits the pinnacle point when Anton is struck with the anxiety attack in his summer house in Tuscany, Italy. “He had been reading a little, and suddenly he looked up, disturbed by the silence. Restless, he began to wander through the whitewashed, irregularly shaped rooms and went up and down the spiral staircase with the uneven steps. Now and then he tried to sit down, but this made it so much worse that he stood up at once” (Mulisch, 155). With this attack, it made Anton not function correctly. From all those years of suppressing his emotion, it had made Anton feel the effects from the physical pain of anxiety he had experienced in Tuscany.

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Shukhov feels pain only when he is not working with his comrades. In his isolation, such as eating and sleeping is when Shukhov experiences most of his physical pain. From the time Shukhov wakes from his sleep, Shukhov has been experiencing pain. When the Tartar gave Shukhov the duty of mopping the commandant’s office, the pain Shukhov had was gone. But the moment when his mopping was done, Shukhov was to report to the mess hall for breakfast. “…his exhausted stomach wouldn’t hold any kind of food, and his bowels could move nothing but a bloody fluid” (Solzhenitsyn, 11-12). Thus proving that Shukhov could not perform the essential human activity of consuming food because Shukhov was not working; it shows that working gave Shukhov a purpose in life.

A similarity that can be pointed out in both One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Assault is that the pain helps the protagonists reveal the needs for themselves. In The Assault, Anton has an appointment with his friend and dentist in Haarlem, Van Lennep, due to the toothache he has in his mouth. “The miracle had happened. The pain receded behind the horizon and disappeared as if it had never existed” (Mulisch, 167). The pain Anton has been experiencing is gone after Van Lennep pulled it out with a grey sheet. From the dentist’s office, Anton attended a rally against the use of nuclear bomb. At the rally, Anton met a relic from the past: Karin Korteweg. After the story Karin tells of her family’s experience since the assault, Anton finally accepts the fact his family is gone. “Anton’s anxiety and panic had totally disappeared” (Mulisch, 168). Anton accepting the past, his pain is gone. In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the pain Ivan Shukhov experiences is when he is not working. Working for Ivan is a shared companionship with the other prisoners for it is they who share the same pain that Shukhov is experiencing. It makes Shukhov valuable, not a rotting prisoner in a cell. It gives Shukhov a purpose in the prison life he only understands. Being in prison so long, Shukhov has forgot how to live like a regular life. He only understands how to survive in prison. While working, it eases the pain Shukhov has because he shares it with the other prisoners. In the scene when Shukhov is working outside in the winter cold, “ now Shukhov and the other masons felt the cold no longer...Even the breeze, light but piercing, couldn’t distract them for the work” (Solzhenitsyn, 79). Thus proving the fact Shukhov is in pain when he is not working with his fellow prisoners. By the end of the novel, Shukhov realizes the day of work had made the pain go away when it gives him worth and value. “Shukhov went to sleep fully content…And he hadn’t fallen ill. He’d got over it” (Solzhenitsyn, 139).

Anton’s pain in The Assault is the culmination of many significant themes in the novel. With the memories buried in the mind of Anton had been used to show the physical pain Anton experiences throughout the novel. Holding the memories and pains experienced in the novel had cause Anton to realize that repressing the memories only get worse. Since the pain has no where to go, the pain is shown through his exterior, his body. With no one to understand his own pain, it gives the reader that Anton is isolated from the rest of the world. Similarly, Ivan Shukhov’s pain is the idea of isolationism. When Shukhov is not working with his comrades, giving him no worth or value, the pain he suffers from is from the neglect of human comfort and understanding. Both men are marked by pain and isolation, with the Anton’s pain of emotional neglect and Shukhov’s pain of social isolationism as crucial events in their tormented portrayal.

Works Cited

Mulisch, Harry. The Assault. Trans. Claire Nicolas White. New York: Pantheon, 1985.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Trans. Ralph Parker. New York: Signet Classic, 2008.