SOURCE: “The Mask of Solzhenitsyn: Ivan Denisovich,” in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Critical Companion, edited by Alexis Klimoff, Northwestern University Press, 1997, pp. 41-53.

In the following essay, Jackson discusses the major themes, narrative presentation, and characterization of the imprisoned protagonist in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, noting similarities to Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead.

The narrator in Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona’s Home (1963) reconciles himself to his meager diet in Matryona’s house because, as he puts it, “life had taught me not to find the meaning of everyday life in food.” With this statement Solzhenitsyn’s narrator illuminates an ancient truth: “Man lives not by bread alone.”¹ In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), however, Solzhenitsyn’s hero, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, seems to find the meaning of life in food, clothes, and other everyday...