SOURCE: “The Names in Solzhenitsyn's Short Novel: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” in Names, Vol. 23, No. 2, June, 1975, pp. 103-11.

In the following essay, Ruttner examines the symbolic and metaphorical meanings attached to character names in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, drawing comparison to the use of names in the fiction of Nikolay Gogol.

A number of articles have been devoted to Solzhenitsyn’s connection with the classical Russian literary tradition. N. Pervushin draws parallels between Solzhenitsyn’s One Day, Dostoevskii’s Notes from the House of the Dead and Tolstoi’s War and Peace.¹ He also finds stylistical similarities between Solzhenitsyn’s short novel and Chekhov’s short stories.² Vintila Horia speaks about formal traces which Tolstoi has left in Solzhenitsyn, but maintains that he has much more in common with Dostoevskii’s humanity.³ Roman Gul finds similarities in the works of...