World Literature Assignment I, English A1 HLCompare and contrast the ways in which the Häftlinge in Primo Levi’s ‘If This is a Man’ and zeks in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ overcome the dehumanisation they

Both ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and ‘If This is a Man’ by Primo Levi are books written about one of the most horrific features of the twentieth century – forced labour camps. Although the authors describe different types of camps with different regimes, their stories are very similar in one aspect. Both of them write about the degradation of the human soul as a result of the harsh conditions in the camp. However, despite cold, hunger, humiliating treatment, and omnipresent fear of death, some prisoners in both narratives, in particular the heroes of each, managed to maintain their humanity, largely through the formation of either genuine friendships or pragmatic alliances. Still, Häftlinge in the Nazi concentration camp are more devastated by the system than zeks in the Gulag camp, because, although all had to endure forced labour in both camps, the Gulag was established with the purpose of obtaining a free labour force, while the Germ...