Comparison Of The Writing Styles Of Joseph Conrad And Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Term Paper Title	Comparison Of The Writing Styles Of Joseph Conrad And Alexander Solzhenitsyn
# of Words	1352
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.41

Comparison of the Writing Styles of Joseph Conrad and Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Kelsie L. Anderson
Mrs. Victorson
AP English IV
3 November 1998

Anderson 1

     Joseph Conrad and Alexander Solzenitsyn each have a distinctive style which is apparent in many aspects of their writing.  Heart of Darkness is about the adventure of Charles Marlow into the heart of Africa to find the elusive ivory trader, Kurtz.  The story focuses on Marlow's discovery of himself and the nature of man under savage conditions.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich tells of the monotonous day of one prisoner, Ivan Denisovich,  in a Siberian gulag.  The result is a knowledge of the terrible treatment and the perseverance of the prisoners in the camps.  The distinctive style used by each author can be compared by discussing the symbols, diction and motif in each novella.
     The symbols in Heart if Darkness and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich are congruent, however they are approached in unique ways by each author.  Animal symbolism is the most apparent throughout both novellas.  Solzhenitsyn uses animal imagery to refer to the oppression of the prisoners, namely as domesticated livestock.  Every morning, meal break and night the men in the camp had to line up by fives and be counted, "Just like a bunch of sheep!" (39).  This exclamation from a guard demonstrated the lack of human compassion and respect given to the prisoners of the gulag system.  By contrast, Conrad used animal symbolism as an indication of savagery.  When Marlow looked at the map he was drawn to the snakelike Congo River because he knew it lead into the savage innards of
Anderson 2

Africa, which England professed as in need of civilization by the colonists.  The animal imagery of the African natives enforces the idea that the white men where needed to help the people to a better future.  When Marlow first arrived in Africa he was "horror-struck [when] one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink" (84).  The use of this language exhibited the popular view, in England in the late nineteenth century, that the Africans needed to be domesticated like dogs and be brought into society.  It is clear that the use of animal symbolism in these two books was employed for completely different meanings.
     The diction used by Conrad and Solzhenitsyn are the most significantly different aspect of the two novellas.  The analysis of diction relies on two main aspects of writing: narration and sentence structure.  Although both works have a single, limited, first person narrator, the actual story telling is very dissimilar.  In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich the narrator speaks as if the events are occurring just as you read the book.  Denisovich has no knowledge of what is to come in his day and therefore remains focused on the actual events that happen.  On the other hand, Heart of Darkness is a frame story that is being retold to the reader by an unknown narrator.  Even if one were to deviate from the technicality of the unknown narrator in the frame story, Marlow's retelling of his adventure often digresses as he reexamines the events that took place.  The interruption of the frame story does not allow the reader to become to entrenched in the situation of Marlow, but Solzhenitsyn's goal was to put the reader in the prison camp with Denisovich so he would be able to experience the pure horror and degradation of the gulag experience.  Along with narration, the structure of the author's words also adds to the overall affect of the work.
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  Solzhenitsyn and Conrad are again at opposite ends of the spectrum.  The understated, economy of words used by Solzhenitsyn "gives a greater reality to the cruelty of the camps, to the systematic criminality of the Soviet penal system, than a shriller voice and an emphasis on the killing, the suicides, the self-mutilation, the torture would have given" (507 Rothberg).  This quiet tone of the novella allows the rea...

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