Character development of Shukhov in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

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Character development of Shukhov in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”        

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, the protagonist of the novel ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ is a prisoner in the Soviet prison camp. He was caught by the Germans during the Second World War with perfidy when he tried to come back to Soviet lines. He spent earlier time of his imprisonment in Ust-Izhma camp and then in the "special" political camp. The special political camp was in the hands of harsh and abrasive authorities. Shukhov has spent eight years and he has enough experience of most of the tricks that can be used in the camp for the survival. He knows all the legerdemain of the harsh camp system, how to get extra food or other favours but he sticks to his moral principles of doing things so that there would be no harm for his self-respect. He actually adapts his own ways of survival in the camp.

Shukhov was a farmer when he was in his home, in his own free life he used to think about the farming, buying horses and haymaking etc. It shows his agricultural experience and also shows his hard working life of being a farmer. As his life starts to move on, his carriers and thinking also changes with respect to his position. Then he became soldier of the Second World War but after that he could not go to his free living life of farmers and captured by Germans. Now, the life and thinking of Shukhov is in the hands of the authority of the special camp. His life is totally changed, he does not think about his life and does not plan what he have to do for the next day. He is even no longer free to think.  “During his years in prisons and camps he’d lost his habit of planning for the next day, for a year ahead, for supporting his family. The authorities did his thinking for him about every day.”

In the camp, Shukhov and his mates rely on each other and especially on the authorities who decide their life even for the basic needs of the life like food and warmth. Throughout the novel, the dependence on each other in the camp can be seen for the deprivation of food, warmth etc. Shukhov, in the beginning of the novel, depends on his mate, Fetiukov, who would save breakfast for him. Later on, Shukhov shows his dependence on Tsezar for the warmth and to stimulate his mind to have a cigarette from Tsezar which he was smoking. “At once he noticed that his team mate Tsezar was smoking, and smoking a cigarette, not a pipe. That meant he might be able to cadge a smoke. But he didn’t ask straight away, he stood quite close up to Tsezar and, half turning, looked past him.” Shukhov does not want to down his own dignity, so instead of asking him, he just stood there and waited for Tsezar to offer him a cigarette. It shows his self- possession attitude.    

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Shukhov is spending his almost eight years of his life in the camp and he is crossing through the dispossession of basic needs of the life like food, living place and warmth. He is sentencing enough time of his life to understand and discover new artifice in order to get enough food and warmth. He is good in hand work, building, making and hiding things. He has good methods of saving little things for the future use. In the beginning of the novel, there is an example of his small saved thing- spoon, which he made himself. It also shows ...

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The style is usually correct and the sentences and paragraphs organised into clear structures. However, the writer often seems to get lost in his own grammatical structures by not using enough punctuation or repeating words (e.g. “authorities who decide their life even for the basic needs of the life like food and warmth”). This confuses the essay’s arguments and sets a linguistic barrier in front of what could be a well-argued, concise piece of work. Moreover, the writer should not use colloquialisms such as “and so on”, “actually”. Having a more idiomatic, rather than dispassionate, attitude to the writing style might also raise the standard of the essay.

The writer provides many examples, including quotations, to give a flow to the argument that the protagonist has, indeed, undergone a transformation. However, these examples are too straightforward and separated from each other, as if the entire middle of the novel had been omitted; this makes it impossible to see exactly how the transformation took place. All in all, the analysis, though competent and based on facts, is too superficial to make this essay excellent. Each of the examples should have been followed by a more analytical insight, rather than one, simple sentence, which reiterated the quote. On a similar note, the writer should have dived deeper into literary vocabulary and used it; this would have immediately made the analysis more precise.

Although the introduction to this essay seems promising and based on fact, the body and conclusion are badly argued and render the essay superficial and lacking in analytical insight. The essay starts off on a very concrete note, giving the character’s background; however, the author could have included less facts and more introductory words that relate directly to the topic; indeed, he could have steered the general theme towards a more specific argument. This would have automatically guided him towards a more specific response, rather than making the essay as vague as it is. After the introduction, the overall structure is clear, precise. Unfortunately, the contents do not quite match it; the response is suffused with examples and quotes, while the analysis that is essential to an essay on this level vanishes. This gives the essay rich potential, but it has not been developed, which means that the form, rather than content, guides the essay – and as such, there is no clear line of argument, but rather a descriptive account of what the protagonist has been experiencing throughout the novel. Towards the end of the essay, the writer veers away from the aforementioned specific examples, which means that the conclusion resembles a grand, sweeping, yet hollow statement; we have not seen enough proof to make the conclusion valid!