One Day in the Life of I.D. (work in progress)

Quoting Wikipedia: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Russian: Один день Ивана Денисовича) is a short novel by the Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir (New World). The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the early 1950s and describes a single day in the life of ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

Task: Make a list of background issues you need to research to be able to comment on the different contexts of this story.

Writing in second person:
https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-writing-in-second-person.html
Deportations from Estonia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Estonia
Map of Gulag camps:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/4269mb/map_of_gulag_camps_in_the_ussr_which_existed_from/

Gulag history: https://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/living.php.html

In Detailed study questions (on Tera, the doc with "ideas" as the last word, beginning on p6), which one question from each section is the most promising from the viewpoint of discussion rather than just finding facts from the text?

Socialist realism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism

https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-other-modern-languages/russian-and-eastern-european-literature/socialist-realism

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/socialist_realism

Revision of tone and mood

Differences and examples: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/tone-vs-mood#what-is-tone-in-literature

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/difference-between-tone-and-mood-in-literature.html
Tone and mood words doc on Tera

Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/ewaszolek/mood-and-tone-27156461

Novels that take place in a single day: 

https://electricliterature.com/15-novels-that-take-place-in-a-single-day/

Stalag 17: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_17

Stalag 17 film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKc2GJk2OLQ (2 hrs)

Symbols / Imagery / Allegory in One Day: numbers as new identities; medical ward (cleanliness)

https://www.shmoop.com/ivan-denisovich/symbolism-imagery.html (light; food (esp bread); symbols of religion and polite manners (sharing is caring?); snow, ice, cold; Shukhov's possessions; throat cutting...)

Task: Discuss this list of abstract issues as themes (see relevant blog post)

Task: What makes a text timeless and literary???

timeless = not affected by the passage of time or changes in fashion

literary = having a marked style intended to create a particular emotional effect

1970 film on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqG1uwhTX2o (1:45:48)

How to analyse a film: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/film-analysis/

NB! Do not go on before the whole novel has been discussed in detail

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: One Book, One Chicago Spring 2006 (includes quite a lot of background info + some discussion questions): 

https://www.chipublib.org/one-day-in-the-life-of-ivan-denisovich-one-book-one-chicago-spring-2006/

Sparknotes: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/denisovich/

Creative task: Day in the life of ...