SOURCE: “The Geometry of Hell: The Poetics of Space and Time in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Critical Companion, edited by Alexis Klimoff, Northwestern University Press, 1997, pp. 54-69.

In the following essay, Tempest examines mathematical aspects of internal structure, hierarchies of relationships, and multiple realities portrayed in the enclosed space of the prison camp in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Many of Solzhenitsyn’s fictions are set within an enclosed, artificially constructed space—a prison, a peasant hut, a labor camp, a hospital—with its own topography, its own history, and occasionally its own flora and fauna. Each of these self-contained worlds is inhabited by a group of people, a little mankind with its own social hierarchies and personal relationships. The characters in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The...