Bolan is an adjunct faculty member of Columbia College of Missouri extensions, a published writer of essays, short stories, and poems, and a playwright. In the following essay, she examines Ivan as the protagonist in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and how this character affects setting, symbol, and theme in a literary, political, and personal way.

When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote his testament to truth, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he based it on his own experience, but he chose for a protagonist a Russian peasant. This choice of the common man, whose code of prison ethics is a blueprint for survival, affects the setting, symbol, and theme in a literary, political, and personal way.

In a literary and even political way, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov as the protagonist represents Russia more than any other type; his peasant wisdom goes unquestioned and his...