the outsider introduction.

The stranger outsider is a novel by nobel-prize winning author Albert Camus. It is based on the life a middle aged man called Meursault, who in the heat of the moment (no pun intended), gunned down an Arab. The novel moves on to his trial and subsequent debate. I will not diverge further information because: I don't want to ruin it and I haven't read that far yet.

It was orginially written in French and it is known for its thoroughly descriptive passages and existentialist nature: even though Camus denies it. The translation we are reading was formualted by Joseph Laredo for Hamish Hamilton in 1982 and was published by the Penguin publishing conglomerate a year later.


Born in the November of 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria to a, excuse my french, Pied-Noir family, Albert Camus rose from the ashes of poverty and went to the University of Algiers, where he studied Philosophy. He also played Goal-keeper for the football team. Camus joined the Communist party but was later dismissed and accused of being a Trotskyist. He was later linked with anarchist movements. He moved to Paris to work for the Paris Soir newspaper agency.During WWII he was part of the French resistance and founded,and wrote for, the under-ground newspaper: Combat. He won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1957. 3 years later, Camus sadly died, with his friend, in a car crash in 1960, at the age of 46. In his pocket: a train ticket. He had planned to travel by train that day.

Note: A link to the novel online is added to the sidebar, however one should note that the translations, like the Ivan Denisovich version, are slightly different. However, the subject matter remains the same.

the reason why Solzhenitsyn chose a good day.

The day seems absolutely horrific for us. Getting up at 5:00am, to eat what seems like diluted dishwater and than walking to a power station, in subzero temperature throughout, to work for 10 hours, only to return back to eat more of the diluted dishwater and sleep on a uncomfortable bed.

The day, if we were to experience it, would possibly be the worst day of our lives.

However just before going to bed Shukhov is described as "pleased with life" and the day was accounted as "almost happy" The day was a good one for him.

Solzhenitsyn plays with the reader's notion of a 'bad day' as he make a good day, for the zeks, absolutely revolting.

The reader than is left to imagine what a bad day is like. The reader believes, due to this contrast, that the GULAG camps had hideous living conditions and the USSR, with approval and implementation of the GULAG system, was breaking international human right laws.

The reader is appauled with the government employees in this text, and thus sympathize with the position of the zeks

continuity and monotony.

continuity.

The lack of chapters is a clever method adopted by Solzhenitsyn

that reflets the seemingly never ending and relentless sentence

the zeks were sentenced too. The reader sympathizes with the

zeks as he two is locked within the book, unable to break, as

there seems to be no break in the prose.


The end of chapters are conventional points for the reader to

stop at and the lack of chapters handicaps the reader into

reading on. The reader, similar to the zeks, hasfreedom taken

away from himself/herself, in the form that they have to read

on.

The reader than feels easier to sympathize, or if you detest

reading, empathize with the zeks which are put on a strict

schedule, are stolen of their freedoms and our serving a endless

sentence.

monotony.

The simple authorship is combined with the lack of chapters in

this book to provide a sense of monotony throughout the novel. The book has no evident climax or buildup. There was nothing notably amazing about the plot of the book and there is no point at which the book seems like an ideal candidate for a blockbuster movie. However the humdrum tone of the novel colligates with the feel of the prison sentence, thus allowing, like the aspect of continuity, the reader to sympathize with the zeks.

trailer II : russian rap edition.

Political and Prison novel

The novel "one day in the life of ivan denisovich" is categorized as political novel and prison novel.

one day in the life of ivan denisovich trailer

literary devices and limitations to analysis.

Similar to the usage of diction, Solzhenitsyn keeps the utilization of linguistic features at a minimum, thus keeping the language of the book simple, and thus emulating the language the zeks use. The writing in casual and straightforward. The description is frank and to the point:"Shukhov was delighted. He thanked the Tartar for letting him go and said,"From now on i'll never get up late again"

A limitation to analyzing linguistic features is that the translation of the text could have lost some of the stylistic features such as alliteration. This includes russian based allusions or metaphors. The translator would have translated them out in familiar metaphors or allusion, while Solzhenitsyn would have used features native to Russia.