One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn / Narrated By: Frank Muller
Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
Uhm, not what I expected, but oddly grand.
Ya know, I kinda sorta am into gritty and horrific accounts of life’s atrocities, the survival skills a person develops through prolonged association with stress and horror, maybe of a continuing or devolving illness. So, not having read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich during AP English in high school—Seriously, we were taught critical thinking skills but our exposure to a variety of world literature was sorely lacking—I’d rather thought going into this Listen that I’d be in for a bumpy and emotionally exhausting ride.
Uhm, lemme tell you what I found instead…
An oddly inspiring tho’ rather bleak and heartbreaking work.
We begin with Ivan Denisovich Shukhov waking up, so very cold, his body just not feeling right. Everything hurts, he’s kiiiinda feeling sick, but ain’t all the way there yet. Still, the thought of joining his work crew for an entire day of backbreaking labor is beyond unappealing. He’s no shirker tho’. He’s a man who works hard, takes pride in doing his job well, doesn’t hang around the sick clinic at all. But as he barely has an elevated temperature, he’s unable to do what he’d most like to do: Just lie in a bed, in a building that has a bit more heat than the barracks, just sleep, and sleep, and sleep.
Nope.
And so the day goes, and we follow Shukhov as he simply lives the most basic camp law: Survive just one day more, just make it through today.
There is the perpetual hunger, as he tries to wangle an extra ounce or two of soup from the bottom of the pot where perhaps a bit of potato might’ve settled, as he tears his 6 oz. of bread in two, secreting the second 1/2 in his coat jacket. There are those precious precious 10 mins. during the morning where a man can just Be, just Himself, just FOR Himself, where he’s not told what to do.
Then it’s off to be with his work squad, the 104, with the fair and somewhat decent Tyurin as foreman of the gang. Making buildings out here in the frozen wasteland from the ground up, where the base temperature is -17 degrees, not counting the wind that lashes and freezes mortar as crews have to oh so quickly use it before it’s solid as dead weight rock.
Now see? I reeeally thought this would be grueling, and it’s actually rather tragic that at the end, Shukhov reflects on what a good day it was for him. This, it turns out, is quite true. They’re all in an unforgiving place, basically sentenced to Death as a zek (Prisoner) can be sentenced to 10 years, serve it, and then have another sentence tacked on, for no reason. All this for crimes such as Being a Spy (As in Shukhov’s case: He’d escaped a German POW camp), for having the audacity to speak even mildly ill of Stalin, for asserting a basic human right. And to receive a 25-year sentence? Wipe out your personality, do NOT think, just exist one day more, eat the fish bones, suck the marrow out as you’ll need everything to survive.
Heavy. But through Shukhov, we see that many individuals did NOT wipe out their basic humanity, and they continued to take pride in this act or that act, that choices were made daily, hour by hour, based on simple affirmations of their dignity. That friendships and acts of kindness were developed and extended, who cares that the motives may’ve been of a self-preserving manner? Shukhov’s spirit shines through it the entire day we walk with him.
Now onto Frank Muller, a narrator I KNEW would be up for taking on any classic and imbuing it with all that was necessary to pack a wallop. He was The Voice(s) in All Quiet on the Western Front, and my GOSH did he properly convey the complete and utter tragedy of that particular story. Here, his is a remarkably understated performance. There are no Big Happenings in this single day of Shukhov, there are simply thoughts and motives, actions, brief pangs of isolated contentment (Finding a particularly handy trowel and hiding it away so that it might be used another day). Muller does it all so that nothing is shouted, but my gosh is everything felt. I have several more audiobooks in my Library with his narrations, but?
Two are Cormac McCarthy, and YIKES! I don’t think I’m going to be ready for those any time soon, esPECially as I’m certain Muller’ll deliver the quiet devastation, the powerfully-written text, with ease. Soooo, tho’ I am intrigued by the pairing of narrator and writer? I do believe I shall hold off on m’ next Muller Fix.
So, awesome narration of a compelling piece. DEFinitely put me in a place of gratitude on this end. We moan and kvetch and take offense and condemn whenst we think we’ve been wronged. But dude! Listen to One Day in the Life… and fall to your knees. Our lives are filled with the stuff of dreams.
And we know grace.
We know mercy.
A fine way to live.
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