Solzhenitsyn's short stories and novels … are closely linked with one another philosophically. There is, however, a significant difference between the three novels and the short stories. At least two of the novels deal directly with prison life, and the third, The Cancer Ward, alludes to it through the figure of Oleg Kostoglotov; in his short stories Solzhenitsyn does not concern himself with this feature of society. There he seems rather to be attempting to break out of the context of forced confinement in order to project his ideas and philosophy in a more familiar setting. And yet even Solzhenitsyn's short stories do not omit the experience of the zek altogether. "Matryonin Dvor" (Matryona's House) and "Pravaya Kist" (The Right Hand), both highly autobiographical, contain veiled references to the convict's world…. In Solzhenitsyn's short stories, prison life is thus no longer a major topic in itself, but an experience which engenders in his characters a more profound view of the world. (p. 104)
As one of Solzhenitsyn's most important literary achievements is his highly developed narrative style, his efforts as a playwright necessitated an enormous adjustment in craftsmanship. The reader who can fully appreciate Solzhenitsyn's language in the original finds his dynamic narrative, his precise and often unusual lexicon, exceptionally persuasive. But in drama the narrator is absent, the entire text consists of the direct speech of characters whose language cannot deviate very substantially from the standard of a given social milieu. If Solzhenitsyn's plays fail, they do so partly because of an inherent feature of the genre itself—the absence of the narrator.
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