SOURCE: “Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” in The Explicator, Vol. 40, No. 3, Spring, 1982, pp. 61-3.

In the following essay, Yarup discusses Solzhenitsyn's evocation of sense perception as a means to dramatize Soviet domination in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Reveille was sounded, as always, at 5 A.M.—a hammer pounding on a rail outside Camp HQ. The ringing noise came faintly on and off through the windowpanes covered with ice more than an inch thick, and died away fast. It was cold and the warder didn’t feel like going on banging.

The sound stopped and it was pitch black on the other side of the window, just like in the middle of the night when Shukhov had to get up to go to the latrine, only now three yellow beams fell on the window—from two lights on the perimeter and...